The effects of the European Semester on Belgium’s pension reforms and tax-shift away from labour: an empirical study

The article analyses the effects of the European Semester on specific Belgian policies. As central parts within the employment and social policy domains, pensions and labour taxation respectively have been chosen as promising cases for a thorough analysis. Both fields have been often characterized as ‘sticky’, in the sense that the Europeanization process there has been subtler and more limited there than elsewhere. From a legal perspective, social and employment policies can be subject only to coordination among Member States (Art. 5 TFEU), thus attributing all competencies to the national level and lacking legally binding instruments strictu sensu –apart from some directives and regulations mainly concerning working conditions and equality at work. As a result, a central question raised by the emergence of the new coordination framework is whether and how the European Semester is able to influence domestic employment and social policies, de facto as well as de jure.