The political economy of the social dimension of economic and monetary union The effects of the European Semester on social and employment policies in Belgium

The thesis gives a detailed picture of the Semester’s influence on specific social and employment policies in Belgium for the period 2011-2017. Its main contribution to the current literature lies in filling the persisting empirical gap regarding the effects of the European Semester at the national and sub-national levels, while explaining in an analytical manner how exactly actors are incentivized to adopt EU recommendations. Through the use of process tracing, I aim to present a theoretically and empirically grounded approach to the effectiveness of the European Semester, by analyzing the latter’s causal mechanisms as well as the mediating factors which affect its implementation. For this purpose, three particular cases have been chosen within the Belgian context: pension reforms, the ‘tax shift’ away from labour, and the integration of migrants in the labour market. Contrary to what a large part of literature contends, I argue that the Semester’s main impact lies not in its stricter institutional structure and the fear of legal sanctions, but on the signaling role of its recommendations, primarily towards EU counterparts and domestic electorates. The research findings drawn from the Belgian cases show that the legal basis of the CSRs does matter, in the sense that the SGP contributes to the external pressure mechanisms for immediate reforms, while the MIP does not seem to do so, despite the similar possibility of sanctions associated with its procedures. But again, the SGP’s importance can be found in its signaling role, primarily for the reputation of a member state towards its EU obligations – domestically as well as internationally.