Introduction

In the years following the global economic crisis of 2008, with its particular impact on the Eurozone and many Southern European economies, the European Commission (EC) has been seeking to ‘restabilise’, while also aiming to continue to develop the European project. One of the key mechanisms at the centre of this process has been the establishment in 2011 of the European Semester as a system of economic governance and social policy coordination (Delors et al., 2011). The Semester's principal purpose is to monitor the economic performance of member states, and specifically their adherence to European Union (EU) rules for managing public finances (Gros and Alcidi, 2015), although the Semester has a wider role in promoting the EU's longer-term strategic goals, including in relation to social and educational issues (Peña-Casas et al, 2015). However, despite the critical importance of the European Semester within EU governance structures, it remains little understood outside of Brussels policy circles.

In this chapter, we seek to ‘open up’ the European Semester as a ‘policy space’ (Lawn and Grek, 2012), and at a technical level, to demonstrate both how it works and how it influences and shapes education policy in member states. In so doing, we argue that those committed to shaping democratic public education in communities must engage in this policy space and ‘open up’ the Semester politically so that it becomes responsive to the voices of citizens, service providers and users at national and local levels. While any attempt to ‘democratise’ technical European policy processes is difficult, and carries the risk of incorporation into bureaucratic procedures that may make little difference, we argue that there are new opportunities for labour and social movements, as well as civil society organisations, to intervene in the Semester process in order to shape its outcomes, and that seeking to exploit these opportunities is worthwhile.

The chapter draws on research undertaken in 2016 and 2017 on behalf of the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE), the European regional organisation of the global union federation Education International. The research involved detailed analysis of the European Semester process combined with interviews with key policy actors, including EC officials in relevant directorates, social partners (employer and trade union confederations) and civil society organisations.