From initially defining new governance processes as external to 'traditional' forms of EU law, a number of academic scholars have begun to argue that methods like the OMC can be seen as indicative of a broader 'transformation' of European law-making. The transformation thesis relies on seeing...

Tackling pensions' problems means engaging with what Pierson (2001) has called 'immovable objects'. Additionally, the EU competence for drafting specific legislation in this area remains unfulfilled potential, while EU legislation in other policy areas creates indirect pressures on national...

As the European Union (EU) has strengthened, scholars have emphasized the development of multilevel governance structures and the salience of subnational actors. With the launch of the Open Method of Coordination and the increasing development of non-binding regulations, we must re-consider the...

This introduction provides a brief overview of the existing OMC literature with regard to the introduction of the OMC, its theoretical conceptualisation of effectiveness and legitimacy and related empirical findings. The main part of the introduction, however, focuses on chosen shortcomings of...

From the perspective of the concept of legalization, the European Union (EU) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) both have a high degree of implementation powers delegated to them by the Member States. Beyond this categorization there are substantial differences in how they use the...

The aim of this paper is to understand how decision making processes within the EU comes to affect the structures for national policy making within the employment field. The paper addresses the question of how the process of writing new employment guidelines for the EES – European employment...

This paper engages in the discussion about the meaning of the open method of coordination (OMC) for the development of the European Social Model (ESM). It argues that, from a legal perspective, the OMC is a positive development rather than a threat for the ESM. To support this argument, the...

The aim of this article is to analyse the development of the concepts of equal opportunities between men and women and gender mainstreaming with regard to a new policy approach taken outside the traditional community method and to raise the question to what extent these policy instruments can be...

The Social Protection Committee (SPC) is the main forum for exchanging information and best practices among the member states within the framework of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in the fields of social protection and social inclusion. This implies that looking at how and when the SPC...

Even if one may agree with the possible criticism of the Lisbon process as being too vague in com-mitment or as lacking appropriate statistical techniques and indicators, the benchmarking system pro-vided by EUROSTAT seems to be sufficiently effective in warning against imminent failure. The...