Coalitions and the European Employment Strategy - is the strategy genuine multi-level governance?

Paper af Mikkel Mailand

The European Employment Strategy (EES) is the EU member states' attempt to coordinate employment policies. It was initially developed in the mid 1990s and is now part of the broader Lisbon Strategy - also known as EU Growth and Jobs strategy. The EES has been seen as an example of multi-level governance because it involves coordination across levels (supranational, national, local/regional level) and because the way the strategy is exercised blurs the borders between the levels in accordance with one of the hypothesis of the multi-level governance approach.

The paper discusses to what extent the multi-level governance approach really is a suitable theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of the EES. The focus is on four recent policy formulation processes within - or related to - the EES framework: the revision of the EES in 2002-03; the European Employment Taskforce 2003; Wim Kok's High Level Group 2004; and the revision of the Lisbon Strategy in 2005.

The analysis shows that the member states have been the most influential actors in the EES' more recent development although the European Commission still is an important actor. The European social partners and the European Parliament have been less influential in the later development of the EES. It is, however, complicating this picture that various member states and other actors have not worked in isolation, but have formed coalitions across the main groups of actors (the European Commission, the member states, the European social partners and the European Parliament). Although some actors have changed position from one coalition to another, and not all actors pertain to the coalitions, two more or less stable coalitions can nevertheless be found: A 'regulation coalition' around a core including the General Directorate for Employment and Social Affairs and a number of Continental member states; and a 'minimalist coalition' including a number of Scandinavian, Anglo-Irish and Atlantic countries as well as some of the new member states.

The paper argues, that the existence of coalitions with participation of both General Directorates and member states support the multi-level governance hypothesis on blurred boundaries between governance levels, but that the national governments - contrary to another main hypothesis of multi-level governance - continues to form a clear centre in regulating employment policies. That this is the case are supported by a number of factors related to all three governance levels: the inability of the member states and the EU institutions to agree on more binding forms of regulation of employment approach than the Open Method of Coordination; the minimalist coalition's ability substantially to weaken proposals from the European Commission; individual member states ability to create new decision-making arenas such as the European Employment Taskforce despite of resistance from the European Commission; the rareness of committing government involvement of the social partners in national-level employment policies; and the continuous government control of national-level employment policies in most member states despite of partial decentralisation.

Furthermore, the paper argues that although the other main theoretical perspectives on European integration - neo-functionalism and inter-governmentalism - have not more to offer than the multi-level governance approach, the latter remains now more than ten years after its introduction in academia still not much more than an 'organising metaphor'. It needs therefore to be substantially developed in order to continue to attract attention.

Paper for the IIRA European Congress 2007, Manchester.