The Role of Populist Actors in EU Policymaking on Childcare: Analysing the Evolution of the Barcelona Targets

While the scholarship on populism has consolidated over the last years, now overwhelmingly conceptualising it as an ideology, some of the specific dangers of populism, including its influence on the concept of representative politics remain less well understood. Following Taggart’s introduction of the concept of “unpolitics”, recent scholarship has applied the concept to study the impact of populist actors on the quality of EU governance, EU policymaking and, more specifically, decision-making in the Council. Most notably, studies on refugee distribution and economic sanctions have shown the importance of populists’ expedient use of both informal practices that shape the democratic debate in EU institutions and procedural rules to displace deliberation, compromise, and consensus. However, these arguments have been largely based on high-profile examples, while less salient policy realms remain understudied. Examining less salient policy areas is necessary for a more holistic understanding of the phenomenon of unpolitics and to refine its theoretical applications. One such medium-to-low salient realm is (child)care, a notoriously slow-progressing policy area in the EU. Childcare was first introduced to the policy agenda with the so-called Barcelona Targets, originally set by the Council in 2002, which aimed to increase female labour-market participation by enhancing the provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Their long overdue revision was finally tabled alongside the Commission's European Care Strategy on 7 September 2022. In the meantime, some Member States have yet to reach the original goals outlined over 20 years ago. It remains unclear, however, why progress is so slow: Is it due to the usual suspects, such as the EU’s competence limitations in social policy, financial constraints, or lack of political will? Or can other factors, including populist actors “perpetuating the crisis”, explain the slow progress of EU policymaking on childcare? The paper addresses these questions by tracing the progress of the EU’s policymaking on childcare. Using secondary document analysis of both relevant EU documents and media coverage and expert interviews, I explore the behaviour of populist actors in the Council and, consequently, its impact on early childhood education and care policies in the EU. Specifically, I am to uncover whether politics actually took place in some shape or form, as a result of populist efforts to maintain the EU in a state of permacrisis, or whether other structural factors explain slow developments in this policy area. As it is representing one of the vital dimensions of gender mainstreaming policymaking, investigating the negotiations in childcare policymaking allows me to assess the impact of unpolitics on a less salient issue and compare it with previous studies on migration and financial sanctions.