Europeanization with a Little Help from National Actors

European member states do have wiggle room to implement policies which are either lined up with European ones or self‐supporting. Paolo R. Graziano (Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi) argues that the extent to which policy changes are induced by the European strongly depends on the presence of domestic actors willing to facilitate such Europeanization process. Even in cases of similar policy misfits, the compliance to EU preions is not an automatic process and requires the support of support coalitions (among which we may find the government, trade unions, business associations and experts) within each member state.

In his article Europeanization and Domestic Employment Policy Change: Conceptual and Methodological Background (in Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 24, 3, 583-605, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0491.2011.01533.x), Graziano tests the hypothesis according to which the bigger the dissimilarity, or misfit, between the European and the domestic policy structures is, the larger policy changes will be, conditional on a sufficient support from key domestic actors. He provides a comparative analysis of the domestic adaptation processes to European employment policies in two European countries, Italy and France. During the 1990s, the EU adopted a specific strategy aimed at the development of a coherent European Employment Strategy (EES), characterized by four pillars: quantified goals, mainly full employment; a well defined principle, flexibility; a non‐hierarchical procedure and a dedicated European financial instrument, the European Social Fund. Both countries are characterized by a high policy misfit prior to the EES with poorly defined objectives, job security as the main principle, hierarchical procedures and national financial instruments.

An in‐depth analysis of labor market reforms undertaken in Italy and France from the beginning of the 90s leads Graziano to conclude that in 20‐year period Italy experienced great changes in its policy structure affecting all its dimensions. From traditionally passive policies Italy moved towards a more equilibrated policy mix centered on the activation principle. New flexibility‐inspired policies have been successfully adopted and the main targets, identified at the EU level, have been quantified. In contrast, despite some signs of change, passive policies still prevail in France. Reforms in line with the EU precepts, and hence the convergence process, have been more limited than in the Italian case.

Italy and France faced the same degrees of misfit with the European policy structure before the EES. The fact that Europeanization induced relevant policy changes in Italy while limited policy changes occurred in France is explained by the broad consensus in Italy among institutional and social actors with respect to the EU guidelines. The center‐left Prodi government was clearly supportive of EU policy preions.

Moreover, several Italian social actors increasingly became favorable to the EES, including trade unions and business associations. In addition, Italian experts, mainly the Italian Central Bank, played a crucial role in channeling European ideas in the national political agenda. In France the EES was considered less favorably by institutional (in particular left governments) and social actors. Only right‐wing governments declared themselves in favor of EU precepts, but in those cases governmental initiatives were often blocked by societal interests through strikes and trials. Graziano, therefore, displays evidence that the degree of policy change induced by the EU crucially depends on the preferences of key domestic actors and explains why Italy and France opted for different policy structures despite facing identical adaptational EU pressures.