NEUU lens - Village Magazine

October-November  77

NEUU lens

Paul Dillon reviews politicising commodiﬁcation. European Governance

and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency.

Cambridge University Press, 2024:

enlightens empirically and deftly on the new economic governance in the

EU which unleashed social movements and backlash

By Paul Dillon

f discussed at all in Irish media, European

politics is covered in terms of the

personalities of the protagonists. So,

broadcast and newspaper coverage of

appointments to EU positions is a policy-

free zone. It is assumed that personalities

appointed to senior roles will act in ‘Irish

interests’, although precisely what those

interests are is not deﬁned.

Readers looking for deeper analysis will revel

in this new book, which derives from a major

research project titled ‘Labour Politics and the

EU’s New Economic Governance Regime”

launched in 2017. Over 14 chapters, the book

deals with the consequences of a “silent

revolution” which has taken place in EU

governance since the ﬁnancial crisis; the

emergence of New Economic Governance, or

NEG. The EU’s Stability and Growth Pact (SGP),

with its overarching rules on public ﬁnances

and ﬁscal policy, is at the heart of this NEG,

though the process was kickstarted by the

Memoranda of Understandings accompanying

EU bailout funding.

The subject matter is sometimes complex,

delving into EU law, Labour Politics and EU

decision-making, with a particular emphasis

on the impact of NEG across Germany, Italy,

Romania — and Ireland. However, the authors

deal with the issues with authority and a

deftness of touch which make the book

Romania and Italy received prescriptions

from EU executives to establish independent

transport authorities with substantial

regulatory powers to further the liberalisation

process, based on a 2011 Directive but too late

for Ireland’s 2009 National Transport Authority

highly readable.

At the outset, they set out an unambiguous

aim: to help readers get a better grasp of the

new economic governance in the EU. This aim

is more than achieved through empirical

ﬁndings which will be of great value for future

researchers.

They show that a key outcome of the NEG’s

policy orientation has been increasing

employment and social policy commodiﬁcation

— putting things up for sale. This has been

achieved by an “overarching commodiﬁcation

script” applied by EU executives. The

remarkable thing is that one of its eﬀects has

been to unleash a plethora of social movements.

The focus of this book is supranational. Still,

Irish-based readers will ﬁnd their horizons

broadened. The authors show how Romania

and Italy received prescriptions from EU

executives to establish independent transport

authorities with substantial regulatory powers

to further the liberalisation process, based on

a 2011 Directive. By the time these prescriptions

were issued, however, Ireland had already

established the National Transport Authority in

2009.

An important function of this book is that it

serves as a useful record of demonstrations

and protests since the ﬁnancial crisis, gathering

the details together in various charts

throughout the book. The authors, however,

have been on the receiving end of some

criticism for perhaps overamplifying the role of

labour at the expense of others; attendees of

the recent Dublin launch of the book heard

some voices criticise a possible “fetishisation

of labour” on the part of the authors.

The authors argue that the shift to NEG since

the outbreak of the ﬁnancial crisis has posed a

series of direct threats to European Democracy.

This argument is based on an assessment of

the EU technocracy in action, implementing the

NEG with little democratic input. A consequence

of this has been the continued rise of

Eurosceptic parties. The development is

outside the scope of this book, but interested

readers could do worse than read the recent

European Trade Union Institute article

assessing the far-right voting on socio-

economic issues in the European Parliament,

which is available at www.etui.org.

A key strength of the book is that is a

comprehensive attempt to move the debate

about the EU away from the very narrow

“national interest” axis to a commodiﬁcation-

decommodiﬁcation axis. Readers in Ireland,

rarely exposed to a meaningful debate on EU

issues, will surely ﬁnd this engaging,

The book is not just accessible, but highly

available. It can be downloaded from the ERC

website. The fact that the book is free to

download is important in itself and

demonstrates that highly important research,

beneﬁting from public funding, can and should

be made accessible to all.

There is surely room for a follow-up book;

having documented the extent of the

commodifying pressures within the EU, an

account spelling how decisions could be

made diﬀerently by the same authors would

enthral.

Paul Dillon is a PhD candidate at University of

Limerick, and a senior consultant with Syndex.

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