Book Review: The Open Method of Co-Ordination in Action. The European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | Waltraud Schelkle |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270500700307 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Jonathan Zeitlin and Philippe Pochet (eds) with Lars Magnusson, The Open Method
of Co-ordination in Action. The European Employment and Social Inclusion
Strategies,Bruxelles: P.I.E-Peter Lang, 511 pp., 2005, ISBN 90-5201-280-6.
The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) has sparked great interest among students
of European integration. As Jonathan Zeitlin points out in his introduction, one
reason for this interest has been the sheer dynamism with which the OMC has spread.
From the Employment and Social Inclusion strategies it was extended to a host of
other policy areas as diverse as pensions, environment and research and development.
Even the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines that were created in the Maastricht Treaty
are recognisable retrospectively as an OMC. The Stability and Growth Pact, the
epitome of ‘hard coordination’, is now, after its reform in March 2005, arguably an
OMC on fiscal consolidation, since it is very unlikely that hard sanctions will be
imposed on a delinquent government. Like all OMCs, the Pact consists of a structured
process of agreeing on European guidelines and common indicators, subsequent
national reporting on how the respective government intends or took steps to co mply,
and finally periodic review; all as defined in point 37 of the Lisbon conclusions.
Another reason for scholars’ intense interest was its significance as a complement
or a challenge to the time-honoured Community Method. Does the introduction of
the OMC mean that the Member State governments are trying to halt the process of
supranationalisation and reassert themselves with an intergovernmental coordination
method, which assigns only a monitoring role to the Commission? Or is the OMC, on
the contrary, a sign that the EU is finally getting serious about its social gap, extending
EU competencies to core redistributive policies? Can we go even further and see the
OMC as an instrument for building a post-national deliberative democracy, indicating
that, at long last, the EU is doing something about its democratic deficit by applying a
more transparently participatory method? Whatever the answer, the debate on the
OMC is so lively because it is more generally about the changing nature of European
integration.
Anyone interested in the state of our knowledge about the OMC should read this
book edited by Jonathan Zeitlin and Philippe Pochet, pioneers and veterans of this line
of research in all its variants. The monograph does an excellent job in raising and never
losing sight of the big questions, above all in the contributions by Zeitlin and Trubek
and by Trubek. This is combined with a detailed historical overview by Pochet, expert
country studies
1
and finally with most helpful comparative assessments of crucial
aspects (participation by de la Porte and Pochet, gender mainstreaming by Rubery,
Book Reviews
1º proef
European Journal of Social Security, Volume 7 (2005), No. 3 293
1
The exceptions are Ferrera on the Employment Strategy in Italy which has not been updated (while
Sacchi on the Inclusion Strategy in Italy is most informative and up to date) and the study on Ireland
by O’Donnell and Moss, which reads in the second part more like a consultancy report for the Irish
government.
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