Is the OMC an Alternative to the Community Method?

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Is the OMC an Alternative to the Community Method?

• Jonathan ZeitlinUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

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I. The OMC and the Community Method

• Origins and definition
• Announced as a broadly applicable new governance
  instrument for the EU at March 2000 Lisbon Summit
• Built on new Treaty-based policy coordination
  processes introduced during the 1990s
• Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPGs)
• European Employment Strategy (EES)
• OMC defined at Lisbon as a specific ensemble of
  procedural elements involving iterative
  benchmarking of national progress towards common
  European objectives and organized mutual learning
  
• A 4-step governance architecture modeled on the
  EES

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Diffusion and procedural variations

• Lisbon European Council authorized application of
  OMC to a wide range of policy areas
• Including RD/innovation, information
  society/eEurope, enterprise promotion, social
  inclusion, education/training
• OMCs later introduced in other fields, e.g.
  pensions, health care, youth policy, better
  regulation, culture
• Wide procedural variations
• Many new OMC processes did not include full
  Lisbon governance architecture, but only
  fragmentary elements (e.g. European Action Plans,
  objectives, targets, scoreboards, indicators,
  peer review, etc.)

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OMC as a new pathway for European integration

• OMC explicitly conceived by its architects as a
  new pathway for European integration
• Especially suited to complex, domestically
  sensitive policy fields where there is a
  perceived need for European action, but
• Treaty powers are weak, and the EU has limited
  competences
• MS are reluctant to transfer new powers to the
  Union
• National diversity precludes harmonization
• A third way between intergovernmentalism and
  supranationalism (Larsson)

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OMC as a threat to the Community Method

• Rapid diffusion of OMC after Lisbon ? widely
  voiced concerns that suchsoft-law procedures
  represent a threat to the CM
• Defined as binding legislation initiated by the
  Commission, enacted by the Council and the
  Parliament, and enforceable by the ECJ
• Has led to repeated demands that OMC should not
  be used when legislative action under the CM is
  possible
• E.g. White Paper on Governance (2001), debate on
  constitutionalization of OMC at Convention on the
  Future of Europe, EP resolution on the use of
  soft law instruments (2007)

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Conflicting or complementary approaches?

• OMC never intended to serve as sole governance
  instrument for Lisbon Strategy
• Always supposed to be combined with full set of
  EU policy tools (legislation, social dialogue,
  Community Action Programs, structural funds)
• No evidence that OMC has displaced EU
  legislation, even in the social policy field
• Rejection of Commission proposals for application
  of OMC in immigration and asylum

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Interpenetration of OMC and Community instruments

• Often an integral continuity between OMC
  objectives/guidelines and legally binding norms
  embodied in EU directives (Kilpatrick)
• Directives often include non-mandatory
  recommendations which may be enacted into
  national law (Falkner)
• Part-time work, parental leave, gender equality,
  disability rights, occupational pensions
• Growing programmatic integration of structural
  funds with OMC objectives (employment, social
  inclusion)
• Use of EU community action programs (now unified
  as PROGRESS) to support participation by
  non-state and local/regional actors in EES and
  social inclusion OMC

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Hard vs. soft law an elusive distinction

• Hard-law directives increasingly incorporate
  provisions for completion and periodic revision
  through soft-law OMC-style procedures
• Water Framework Directive (2000)
• Broad, open-ended goals MS required to achieve
  good water status by 2015 through integrated
  basin management
• Common Implementation Strategy for assisting MS
  in achieving goals reconciling diverse
  approaches
• Nested organization of EU, national, non-state
  actors
• Regular reporting, monitoring, evaluation of
  national plans
• Generates non-binding guidance documents, which
  can feed into Commission legislative proposals
  comitology decisions

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OMC and experimentalist governance

• OMC as one element in a larger architecture of
  experimentalist governance in the EU, which is
  transforming the Community Method
• Based on recursive processes of framework rule
  making and revision in light of practical
  experience of implementation in diverse contexts
  through networked deliberation among European and
  national actors
• Diffusion across multiple policy areas
• Telecoms, energy, drug authorization,
  occupational health safety, environmental
  protection, food safety, maritime safety,
  financial services, competition, state aid,
  anti-discrimination, fundamental rights ( others)

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II. The OMC in Action

• Most widespread critique of OMC has focused less
  on potential threat to the CM than on its limited
  effectiveness lack of impact on MS
• Much of this debate, both in academic and policy
  circles, suffers from serious empirical deficits
• Reliance on narrow range of often outdated
  evidence/studies
• No systematic evaluation of OMC processes in
  mid-term review of the Lisbon Strategy
• Compounded by methodological problems of
  assessing the causal impact of an iterative
  policymaking process based on collaboration
  between MS and EU institutions without legally
  binding sanctions

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Advancing the European knowledge economy through
OMC a failure?

• Weak performance of innovation/information
  society initiatives within Lisbon Strategy
• Lack of progress towards 3 RD target
• Limited impact/visibility of eEurope policies
• Lite OMC recipes and fragmentary architectures
• European Action Plans, objectives, targets,
  indicators, benchmarking/scoreboards
• But no agreed National Action Plans, systematic
  monitoring/reporting, peer review, or
  country-specific recommendations weak mutual
  learning mechanisms
• External evaluation (Tavistock Institute 2005)
  OMC in these areas cannot yet be said to be a
  success or failure simply has not been fully
  implemented

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The OMC in action employment and social
inclusion

• Employment and social inclusion most fully
  developed and institutionalized OMC processes
• Now a substantial body of empirical research,
  based on both official and independent sources
• Synthetic overviews in Zeitlin Pochet (2005)
  Heidenreich Zeitlin (forthcoming)

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OMC in employment and social inclusion a
qualified success

• Improvements in EU employment performance
• Structural improvements, 1997-2001
• Slower but continuing progress, 2002-6
• But connections to EES complex and uncertain
• Substantive policy change
• Increased political salience ambition of
  national employment and social inclusion policies
  
• Broad shifts in natl policy thinking (cognitive
  shifts)
• Changes in national policy agendas (political
  shifts)
• Some influence on specific reforms/programs
  (policy shifts)
• Two-way interaction between OMCs and national
  policies rather than one-way impact

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OMC in employment/inclusiona qualified success
(2)

• Procedural shifts in governance/policymaking
• Horizontal integration across policy areas
• Improved statistical and steering capacity
• Vertical coordination between levels of
  governance
• Participation of non-state/subnational actors
• Particularly strong mobilization in social
  inclusion
• Uneven but growing participation in EES
• Social NGOs and local/regional authorities more
  active than social partners

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OMC in employment and inclusion a qualified
success (3)

• Mutual learning
• Identification of common challenges and promising
  policy approaches
• Enhanced awareness of policies, practices, and
  problems in other MS
• Statistical harmonization and capacity building
• MS stimulated to rethink own approaches/practices,
  as a result of comparisons with other countries
  and ongoing obligations to re-evaluate national
  performance against European objectives

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OMC in employment and inclusion limitations

• Lack of openness and transparency
• Dominant role of bureaucratic actors in OMC
  processes at both EU and national level
• Weak integration into national policy making
• NAPs as reports to EU rather than operational
  plans
• Low public awareness and media coverage
• Little bottom-up/horizontal policy learning
• Few examples of upwards knowledge transfer and
  cross-national diffusion from innovative local
  practice

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A reflexive reform strategy

• Overcome limitations of existing OMC processes by
  applying method to its own procedures
• Benchmarking, peer review, monitoring,
  evaluation, iterative redesign
• Ongoing reforms as evidence of practical
  viability of this approach
• Strengthening of peer review/mutual learning
  programs (EES, social protection/inclusion)
• Proposals by EU institutions for greater
  openness, stakeholder participation, and
  mainstreaming of OMCs into domestic policy
  making (2003-6)