ABSTRACT
This chapter accounts for the pattern of Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) issued to the Member States between 2011and 2018. Central to the analyses is how social actors navigate and negotiate the hierarchy of the European Semester to achieve their outcomes, the strategies they pursue, and the compromises they make along the way. The analysis within this chapter reveals that as a consequence of the political agency of both the Barroso and Juncker Commissions, the European social dimension has experienced increased political activity and attention within the European Semester, but it has been unable to fundamentally challenge the prevailing political hierarchy, as established during the forging of Europe 2020 and the European Semester and arguably, the process of European integration at large. Meanwhile, the increased political activity and attention this agency affords is synthesised with the market-driven logic of DG Economic and Financial Affairs, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council and national financial ministries. Political contestation within the European Semester is therefore focused on the status of the European social dimension within the Semester, not the politics of welfare policy and the possibility of alternative policy solutions.
