Making and breaking coalitions for a more ‘Social Europe’: The path towards the revision of the posted workers directive

Abstract

The article traces the passage of the legislative amendment that changed the rules of the intra-EU posting of workers, proposed by the Juncker Commission in 2016. Using data gathered from the news media and 11 interviews, it reconstructs the policy-making process, finding that this was shaped by means of intergovernmental interactions between executives of (groups of) member states. A key turning point occurred in August 2017, when the then newly elected French President, Emmanuel Macron, embarked on a highly publicized tour in a select group of eastern European states, with the stated aim of building support for the amending Directive. Eventually, the coalition of Eastern European member states that had initially challenged the Commission’s proposal was dismantled, clearing the way for its adoption. Extra-institutional intergovernmental negotiations propel contested policy initiatives forward by limiting the range of actors involved in the policy process, by relaxing the complex decision-making rules characteristic of the EU, and by providing opportunities to instrumentalize media attention.

Coming to Terms with the European Refugee Crisis

“…Based on their common preferences, member states often form transnational coalitions. New intergovernmentalist scholars have provided evidence that national preference formation in the EU has become an inherently transnational process that involves governments of member states (Kassim, Saurugger, and Puetter 2020;Fontan and Saurugger 2020;Kyriazi 2023). Moreover, under crisis situations where uncertainty and urgency prevail, national preference formation and European-level bargaining tend to become simultaneous processes, with policymakers being involved and negotiating at the national and the EU level at the same time (Crespy and Schramm 2021).…”

Social Reformism 2.0

“…The revised directive expanded to this and other aspects of workers' rights beyond simply pay under the broader notion of 'remuneration'. Overall, the revision of the Posted Workers Directive contributed to lessen wage competition between posted workers and local workers, and brought forward the social dimension in the regulation of posting while striking a compromise between the left-leaning requests for higher guarantees of cross-border workers' rights and the call for levelling the playing field for fair competition between enter-prises in the single market -which was voiced in particular by right-wing parties (Kyriazi 2023, Corti 2022.…”