Towards a meaningful integration of fundamental (social) rights in EMU governance

It is now well-admitted that the Eurocrisis, and the fundamental overhaul of the architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) it precipitated, further exacerbated the structural imbalance between the 'economic' and the 'social' within the EU fabric. On the one hand, the EMU has evolved into a kind of meta-policy, and become the main platform for socio-economic reform in Europe. On the other hand, under that framework, considerations of financial stability, fiscal sustainability and macroeconomic resilience take systematic precedence over the distinctive features of social and redistributive policies. Against such a background of displacement of Social Europe, calls to rebalance the 'economic' and the 'social' within the EMU have come from many sides. In this context, two different approaches can be distinguished. Acting 'from the outside' is the first, and consists in developing, next to the EMU governance system, an ambitious social agenda for the EU, best embodied by positive initiatives expanding the EU social acquis. The European Pillar of Social Rights, the set of legislative proposals it brought about, and the new budgetary capacity which the COVID-19 pandemic brought about, can certainly be read along these lines. An alternative approach would consist in acting 'from the inside'. The idea here is to reshape the various policy processes that constitute EMU governance in such a manner that they better integrate social and human considerations, and give due regard to the rights' impact of the decisions hereby shaped. The focus of this chapter will be on this second approach. Its ambition is dual. First, it will seek to take stock of the action carried out so far by the EU institutions in that regard. Initiatives such as the submission of bailout measures to a social impact assessment (as conducted by the Commission for the third Greek bailout in August 2015) or the socialization of the European Semester will be examined. The chapter will argue that such initiatives, if they signal institutional awareness and go in the right direction, remain deeply insufficient. From there on, and against the background of the recent pandemic, the chapter will attempt to carve out a way forward. More specifically, it will claim that genuine socialization of EMU governance could be achieved if its core outputs were subjected to meaningful 'social rights' impact assessments. The chapter will identify the core features that these instruments should display, and will propose a methodology.