The European Union Center
The Center for German and European Studies
the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE)
and the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA)
present an international conference on

"Enlarging Social Europe:
The Open Method of Coordination
and the EU's New Member States"

29-30 October 2004
Friday: 9:00 a.m. - 4:15 p.m.
Saturday: 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

206 Ingraham Hall
1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI

General Information

About the Conference and the Open Method of Coordination (OMC)

The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is an experimental approach to EU governance based on benchmarking national progress towards common European objectives and organized mutual learning. The OMC has been applied across a growing range of policy areas, including employment, social inclusion/combating poverty, and pension reform. It commits EU Member States to work together towards shared goals without seeking to homogenize their inherited policy regimes and institutional arrangements. It obliges Member States to pool information, compare themselves to one another, and reassess current policies against their relative performance, thus promoting experimental learning and deliberative problem-solving across the EU. It has been hailed as giving practical content to the idea of a distinctive European Social Model based on shared values.

On May 1, 2004, ten new Member States from east-central Europe and the Mediterranean joined the EU, increasing the total to twenty-five. The new Member States differ widely from one another in their levels of economic development, labor market institutions, and social welfare regimes. But compared to the EU 15 average, most have lower employment rates, higher unemployment rates, and higher rates of both absolute and relative income poverty. Most also have lower rates of unionization and collective bargaining coverage, weaker social partnership institutions, and more limited state capacities for the delivery of employment and social welfare services. Like the "old" Member States, however, they also face similar pressures to reform their pension, health care, and social protection systems in response to changing demographic trends, employment patterns, and household/family structures. Hence the OMC, with its common objectives and guidelines, indicators and targets, reporting and monitoring procedures, peer review and mutual learning arrangements, represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the new EU Member States.

The conference will bring together a group of prominent academic researchers and policy practitioners from both old and new Member States, as well as the European Commission, to discuss the promise, pitfalls, and prospects of the OMC as a new governance tool for an enlarged Social Europe.

Speakers

Anton Hemerijck
Director of the Netherlands Scientific Council on Government Policy (WRR)
and Associate Professor of Public Administration, University of Leiden

Denis Crowley
Secretary, EU Social Protection Committee

Katalin Nagy
Deputy Head of Department, State Secretariat for European Integration,
Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Member of the EU Social Protection Committee

Wolfgang Ohndorf
Resident Advisor on the European Employment Strategy to the Government of Latvia
former German member of the EU Employment and Social Protection Committees

David Natali
Researcher, European Social Observatory (OSE)

Charlotte West
Researcher, Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE) and
Södertörn University College, Sweden

Tatjana Evas
Researcher, Riga Graduate School of Law

9:00-9:30 Coffee

9:30-9:45 Welcome - Jonathan Zeitlin (Director of WAGE, Co-Director of EU Center)

9:45-10:45 Anton Hemerijck
Director of the Netherlands Scientific Council on Government Policy (WRR)
and Associate Professor of Public Administration, University of Leiden
"Recasting Europe's Semi-Sovereign Welfare States: The Role of the EU"

10:45-11:00 Break

11:00-12:00 Denis Crowley
Secretary, EU Social Protection Committee
"Open Coordination of Social Welfare Policies:
Results and Prospects in the EU's Old and New Member States"

12:00-1:00 Lunch (registration required)

1:00-2:00 Practitioner Roundtable on the Role of EU Committees in the Open Method of Coordination
(Denis Crowley, Katalin Nagy, Wolfgang Ohndorf)

2:00-3:00 Katalin Nagy
Deputy Head of Department, State Secretariat for EU Integration,
Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and member of the EU Social Protection Committee
"Back to Central Planning? OMC in the New Member States: The Hungarian Experience"

3:00-3:15 Break

3:15-4:15 David Natali
Researcher, European Social Observatory (OSE)
"The Pension Question in an Enlarged EU: What Role for the OMC?"

9:00-9:30 Coffee

Chair: David Trubek (Voss-Bascom Professor of Law)

9:30-10:30 Wolfgang Ohndorf
Resident Advisor on the European Employment Strategy to the Government of Latvia
former German member of the EU Employment and Social Protection Committees
"Implementing the European Employment Strategy and the Lisbon Agenda in Latvia"

10:30-11:30 Charlotte West
Researcher, Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE) and
Södertörn University College, Sweden
"The European Employment Strategy in the Baltic States"

11:30-12:30 Tatjana Evas
Researcher, Riga Graduate School of Law
"Fighting Ethnic and Linguistic Discrimination in the Estonian Labor Market:
The Potential Role of the EU Race Directive and the OMC"

Conference Sponsors
The European Union Center
The Center for German and European Studies
the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE)
and the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA)

Cosponsored by:
The UW-Madison's International Institute Research Circles on Governance and Labor and the Global Economy
The Center for European Studies
The La Follette School of Public Affairs
The EU 6th Framework Program Network of Excellence on
"Multilevel Governance, Democracy and New Instruments:
Connecting Excellence on European Government" (CONNEX)