EU Labour Governance and Europe’s Single Currency

The thesis addresses the evolution of EU labour governance and its relationship to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the financial crisis. The thesis approaches EU labour governance as an essentially contested and structurally weak project of European integration. To this end, the thesis develops critical integration theory for analysing EU labour governance in relation to the EMU. Conceptually, the thesis stresses the role of institutional and global macro-structures and the importance of competing hegemonic projects in mediating structure and agency. Hegemonic projects allow diverse social groups and political leaders to develop comprehensive programmes of action that may transform existing structures of EU labour governance. Advancing a novel framework for studying the institutional and macro-structural conditions for political contestation in the EU, the thesis contributes to European Integration studies and International Political Economy. Empirically, the thesis analyses the relationship between EU labour governance and European monetary integration since the 1980s and highlights the enduring weaknesses and contradictions of the emerging project of EU labour governance. Over time, the thesis argues, EU labour governance has become a terrain of political contestation for Europe’s competing hegemonic projects, most prominently social democrats and neoliberals committed to European integration. Given the enduring nature of these contestations, and the institutional structure of the EMU, EU labour governance has had only a weak and emergent character. Analysing the impact of the financial crisis on EU labour governance, the thesis highlights the contested nature of the neoliberal hegemonic project since the crisis. The thesis argues that enhanced creditor power within the Eurozone has allowed for much more intrusive labour governance in Greece and other programme countries. However, the thesis also argues that the structural weaknesses of EU labour governance persist in the period since the crisis.