Labour Politics and the EU’s NEG Prescriptions across Areas and Sectors

Chapter 11 compares the policy orientation of the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) prescriptions in two policy areas (employment relations, public services), three sectors (transport, water, healthcare), four countries (Germany, Italy, Ireland, Romania) from 2009 to 2019. It reveals that almost all qualitative prescriptions pointed in a commodifying direction. Most quantitative prescriptions tasked governments to curtail wages and public expenditures too, but, over time, they not only became less coercive but also increasingly pointed in a decommodifying direction, tasking governments to invest more. It would, however, still be wrong to speak of a socialisation of NEG, not just given the decommodifying prescriptions’ weak coercive power but also because of their links to policy rationales that are compatible with NEG’s overarching commodification script. Moreover, Chapter 11 shows that NEG prescriptions tasked governments to channel more public resources into the allegedly more productive sectors (transport and water services) rather than into essential social services like healthcare. Given NEG’s country-specific methodology, it is not surprising that there have been only few instances of transnational action on specific NEG prescriptions. By contrast, the share of transnational labour protests targeting EU interventions broadly defined increased after 2008. This suggests that NEG has been altering protest landscapes.