The social dimension of EU economic governance after the Covid-19 pandemic: exploring new interlinkages

Abstract

This article assesses the space for the social dimension of EU economic governance after the Covid-19 pandemic. It does so by looking at the types of instruments that are used to further European social policy. It describes how rule-based, coordination-based and monetary-based instruments are connected to different conceptualisations of European social policy and the role national actors might play, including the social partners. The different instruments are brought together in governance architectures, for example in the European Pillar of Social Rights, the European Semester, and the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Lately, monetary-based instruments have been used more often, also in order to shape European social policy. Moreover, apart from combining different instruments, the governance architectures themselves seem deliberately to be interlinked. The article ends with a provisional research agenda, proposing questions that should be addressed in order to understand how the social dimension is anchored in the wide range of governance instruments.