Jordan, JamieJamieJordanMaccarrone, VincenzoVincenzoMaccarroneErne, RolandRolandErne2020-02-072020-02-072020 the A2021-03British Journal of Industrial Relations0007-10801467-8543http://hdl.handle.net/10197/11260In response to the last recession, the European Union (EU) adopted a new economic governance regime (NEG). An influential stream of EU social policy literature argues that there has been more emphasis on social objectives in the NEG regime in more recent years. This article shows that this is not the case. It does so through an in-depth analysis of NEG prescriptions in wage, employment protection and collective bargaining policy in Germany, Italy, Ireland and Romania between 2009 and 2019. Our main conclusion is that the EU’s interventions in these three industrial relations policy areas continue to be dominated by a liberalisation agenda that is commodifying labour, albeit to a different degree across the uneven but nonetheless integrated European political economy. This finding is important, as countervailing transnational trade union is the more likely, the more there is a common threat. Even so, our contextualised analysis also enables us to detect contradictions that could provide European labour movements opportunities to pursue countervailing action.enThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.European semesterCollective bargainingWagesLabour market policyTrade unionsNew economic governanceEmployment protectionMultilateral surveillanceVertical integrationHorizontal integrationEuropean integrationMacroeconomic imbalance procedureEuropean social policyIndustrial relationsJournal Article59119121310.1111/bjir.125222020-01-14UCD School of Business Seed Fundling 2015GOIPG/2016/1116725240575221-EPP-1-2016-1-IE-EPPJMO-CHAIR2016-2391https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ie/