ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three regimes for the coordination of economic policies in the European Council (EU) Treaty - 'pillar one' of the European Union - namely the Single Market, macro-economic policy coordination, and the Open Coordination Method increasingly applied to a broad range of social policies to foster their 'convergence'. It highlights the relationship between policy goals and instiuitional design, and the evolutionary forces at work. In the European Union, policy coordination amongst member states takes different forms, with varying participants, legal bases and degrees of coercion of public and private actors. Policy coordination is a broad expression. Public services constitute a sensitive aspect of public policy. Early experience with the application of competition policy in this area did produce controversy and friction with some member states. The approach to economic policy coordination embodied the EC Treaty has a fairly simple and logical architecture.
