ABSTRACT
European Union (EU) welfare states face common challenges of ageing populations, low fertility rates, and insufficient labour market participation, especially among low-skilled workers. Furthermore, the criteria associated with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) constrains manoeuvre in fiscal policy, especially during economic recession. Given this context, the ‘social OMCs’ (European Employment Strategy (EES) and OMC in social policy – social inclusion, pensions, healthcare, and care for the elderly) were developed to support welfare reform through multi-lateral ideational exchange. For each area where the open method of coordination (OMC) is applied, the policy cycle is iterative, though its frequency varies. First, policy objectives (sometimes accompanied by quantitative benchmarks) are proposed by the European Commission. Then Member State representatives, first in Council formations and then at the yearly meetings of the Spring European Council, decide upon which objectives the Member States will pursue. Next, efforts to meet the objectives agreed for any given OMC process are reported by Member States, after which they are reviewed by peer Member States and by the EU level (Commission-Council) with assessments of performance, and (very) soft recommendations in the case of non-compliance. In addition, a wealth of information is produced in the specific peer review programmes on the exchange of best practices, designed to provide more in-depth information about a specific aspect of an OMC for practitioners. The OMCs are the EU’s tool for developing and diffusing ideas and policy solutions in a
broad range of areas, in particular in labour market and social policy. OMC ideas are particularly relevant for member states with rigid labour markets, low levels of labour market participation and/or for countries having difficulties to sustain social protection systems. As it is applied in areas of national sovereignty – fiscal policy and social policy – it operates through voluntary learning. However, it is difficult to measure the role of the OMC in the process of ideational change, not to mention its role in policy change. In addition, domestic actors (re)interpret the ideas and objectives of the OMC considerably, making the task even more difficult. Nonetheless, much headway has been made recently in this area, and this involves determining from which aspect of the OMC learning takes place (de la Porte and Pochet, 2012) and through which mechanisms (Weishaupt and de la Porte, 2011).
