Monday, April 28, 2003
2:15 - 6:00 p.m.
Cabot Room, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

The "open method of coordination" (OMC) was developed as a way for the EU to exert "soft" influence on member state social and labor market policies over which the EU has little or no "hard" legislative authority. It seeks to engage concerned governmental and non-governmental actors and operates through common objectives, generic approaches, exchange of best practices, commitments to action, and joint evaluation of implementation. Originating in the European Employment Strategy introduced in the Amsterdam Treaty and elaborated at the Lisbon Summit, OMC has spread to other areas including social exclusion and pensions.

Observers have only begun trying to cut through the rhetoric and "Eurospeak" that has surrounded OMC in an effort to understand what it really means for the EU political process. What role does it play in the reorganization of Europe's political economy in the latest stage of integration, monetary union? Who is trying to accomplish what through OMC? What kind of European society is being fostered through the interaction of OMC and "hard" policy actions of the European Central Bank and EU legislation? Is OMC, as some claim, "a new framework of opportunity for socially oriented actors to put forward their priorities at European level [and] promote an alternative to mainstream economics and neo-liberalism" embedded in Economic and Monetary Union? Is it, as others claim, a creative experiment reaching beyond traditional EU politics toward a novel form of deliberative democracy? Or, as yet others contend, is it a procedure that traps key non-governmental social actors, particularly unions, into acquiescing in a neo-liberal EMU policy regime that relegates employment and social goals to "supply side" approaches that can only marginally affect employment? The workshop will draw on existing knowledge to generate a discussion addressed to these issues.

Format: The discussion will be led by a panel of experts on OMC. Each has provided a paper, available on the CES website, but the papers will not be formally presented. Instead, the discussion will be organized around the following topics, each introduced by one of the experts, followed by additional contributions by the others, and then an open discussion. Attendees are encouraged to read the papers as background for the discussion.

*The workshop is co-sponsored by:
the CES Study Groups on Policy Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies and on European Integration and Domestic Politics; the European Union and World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) Centers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and the Brandeis University Center for German and European Studies.