Why better coordination could help EU countries facing economic and social challenges

After the economic and financial crisis, the case of Greece could set another important example of the ties and spill overs existing between EU national economies.
There are reasonable fears that Greece fiscal crunch may quickly spread out to other vulnerable economies such as Portugal, Italy or Spain, threatening the world’s biggest economic area.

It seems evident than EU 27 economies are highly interdependent, therefore reforms, or lack of them, in one country could seriously affect the economic performance of all the others.
This inevitably leads to think that an efficient coordination among EU countries could help them to face better internal as well as global challenges.Particularly in the areas where the EU has few or no competence, such as employment, social protection, social inclusion, education, youth and training, the Open Method of Coordination is a mean which has the potential to contribute positively in this respect.

This instrument, born in 2000 with the Lisbon Strategy, even if achieved some positive results in methodological terms, setting guidelines and measurable indicators, it failed to be truly effective. This was mainly due to a lack of political commitment and clear weaknesses in terms of governance.

The Commission’s Communication on EU 2020 did not include specific proposals of reform in this direction and the Spring Council conclusions did not even mentioned this point.

However, rather than sidelining the use of OMC, it is important to seriously consider the possibility of reinforcing this mechanism, giving to it a greater role in the EU 2020 in order to face economic and social challenges and achieve common objectives.

How is it possible to make the OMC more effective?

On the basis of the reccomendations put forward by the Social Platform, and fully endorsed by CEDAG, one way of improvement would be first of all to include mechanisms of accountability, with a real involvement of all the civil society actors, the European Parliament and of National Parliaments.

The possibility of holding Governments accountable for their actions by Parliaments and the civil society as a whole, could lead to a stronger political commitment of many Member States.

Moreover, another important incentive for effective coordination would be to better link the financial instruments (structural funds) to well quantified targets.

To conclude, with the celebration of the Shuman declaration approaching, it is relevant to remember that EU Member States chose to be bound together in order to achieve common objectives.