Conditionality in the European Semester: Managing Conflict on the Recovery Agenda

During the long decade of the Eurozone crisis, disagreement over macroeconomic reforms enhanced the politicization of EU decision-making. Some scholars underlined the progressive socialization of the European Semester hinting at a weakening of dissensus at the national level, while others stressed the strong linkage of structural reforms with core neo-liberal policy recipes indicating the persistent propensity of the European economic coordination framework towards the instigation of political conflict. This paper asks whether there is continuity in the macroeconomic conditionality after the launch of the Recovery and Resilience Facility and to what extent does this conditionality trigger dissensus at the national level. Based on a qualitative inquiry involving the analysis of four cases, this paper proceeds to a comparative investigation of conditionality before and after the pandemic to detect any change in the level of controversy of EU policy guidance. Additionally, the paper examines the involvement of national parliaments from a democratic perspective in the formulation and monitoring of Recovery and Resilience Plans to explore the institutional dimension of dissensus. Overall, the paper shows that, while there is continuity in macroeconomic conditionality, the European Semester was employed as a tool for the management of dissensus within national parliaments through the promotion of hierarchical decision-making procedures favouring the executive and limiting parliamentary deliberation.