Labour market policy under the new European economic governance: France in the focus of the new European labour market policy

Abstract

The article examined the influence of the European crisis politics on French labour market regulation. The European crisis management has resulted in institutionalised interventionism, that restraint the European Union member states’ ability to regulate her national labour markets. France was less affected by the crisis but it was also in the focus of the European interventionism. On the basis of the labour market reforms ‘Loi Macron’ and ‘Loi El Khomri’, the article investigates what role the European institutions play and how big was the influence of the European Union in the national negotiation process.

Keywords

European Union Eurozone France French politics labour market policy new interventionism

Introduction

The European integration process is marked by a multitude of crises. Interestingly, in the past, these crises have always been resolved through deeper integration. Heads of state and government also reacted to the eurozone crisis of 2010 with a renewed integration dynamic, incorporating a large number of policy areas directly or indirectly into the European sphere of competence by reforming economic governance. This so-called ‘new economic governance’ (NEG) established a comprehensive regime of economic surveillance and monitoring in the European Union (EU), especially in the euro area. In the academic literature, the NEG is looked at from different perspectives and different emphases are placed in the respective analyses. A central focus of critical research on Europe is the interaction between the newly created instruments of economic policy governance at the European level and national policy areas.

The institutional literature criticised the democratic deficit of European crisis management and focused on the institutional power relation between the debtor and the creditor member states (Crespy & Schmidt 2014; Streeck 2013). In their analysis, the crisis of the euro area was rooted in the different national wage institutions and their incompatibility in the context of a single currency area (Höpner & Lutter 2018; Scharpf 2011). Against this backdrop, they asses European crisis management as an attempt to unify the various national institutions according to the German model. Scharpf (2015: 390) therefore summarises the various reforms as a ‘New Euro Regime’ that ‘generalises the austerity requirements that were initially imposed on debtor states’ in the eurozone crisis. Accordingly, this strand of literature criticises the democratic deficit of the European crisis management and the meagre legitimacy of the new mechanism of monitoring, arguing that surveillance and austerity is not sufficient to overcome the crisis (Scharpf 2015; Schmidt 2016). Rather, the monetary union had to be reformed and compensatory instruments created to reduce trade imbalances between the member states.

In a similar vein, Marxist scholars focus on the NEG’s authoritarian character. In this perspective, the crisis originated in a deep crisis of capitalism and neoliberal hegemony (Overbeek & van Apeldoorn 2012). The special case of the euro area crisis has been explained by looking specifically at the uneven economic development in the euro area and the process of financialisation in the recent years prior to the crisis (Becker et al. 2015; Bieling 2014b; Bieling & Brand 2015). With regard to the NEG, the authoritarian and undemocratic character was described in neo-Gramscian terminology as ‘crisis-constitutionalism’ (Bieling 2015; Bieling et al. 2016), that is, as a special form of ‘new constitutionalism’ (Gill 2014), or in a neo-Poulantzian sense as ‘authoritarian constitutionalism’ (Oberndorfer 2015). Most Marxist analyses of the NEG conceptualised the institutional changes as a condensation of power relations and the dominance of the European ruling class (Heinrich & Jessop 2015). The overarching argument is that under the auspices of economic policy coordination and macroeconomic surveillance, regulations and intergovernmental treaties have produced instruments that expanded European institutions’ influence and sanction power over the reform policies of member states, while shifting decision-making authority from the national to the European level (Bieling 2012; Schneider & Sandbeck 2018; Syrovatka 2018; Wigger 2018). In the case of wage-relation developments in the European Union, they observed a massive shift of responsibilities to the European level in the area of labour market regulation and wage-setting (Bieling & Buhr 2015; Syrovatka et al. 2018). This is accompanied by a critique of the shift of power between capital and labour through crisis and its processing.

European industrial relations scholars and post-keynesian economists share this perspective (Erne 2019; Kohler & Stockhammer 2020; Schulten & Müller 2015). From their perspective, two dominant accumulation regimes based on neoliberal regulation had already established themselves in the EU before the crisis (Stockhammer & Onaran 2012). The combination of debt-driven and export-driven accumulation regimes within the European Monetary Union (EMU) led to imbalances in the price and non-price competitiveness of the European member states, which could not be addressed by the previous policy of wage restraint and wage flexibility (Flassbeck & Lapavistas 2013; Stockhammer 2014; Stockhammer & Köhler 2015; Stockhammer & Onaran 2012). Accordingly, they view the NEG as an attempt to increase flexibility in the labour market as well as in wage bargaining, particularly in countries with credit-based accumulation regimes. This attempt led to a new mode of European integration, enforced by the establishment of quantitative benchmarking mechanisms (Erne 2018). Therefore, post-Keynesian studies focus on the impact of the NEG on the wage relation and particularly on the trade unions’ power resources (Müller et al. 2015; Müller & Platzer 2018; Schmidt et al. 2018). The main argument is that the framework of reform policy in the labour market has been severely curtailed in a neoliberal fashion (Heyes & Hastings 2017; La Porte & Heins 2015: 17; Theodoropoulou 2018). Schulten and Müller (2015) even speak of ‘European labour market interventionism’ (pp. 335–340).¹ On the other hand, post-Keynesian academics put forward the concept of a wage-driven growth regime, which envisages substantial wage increases, especially in Northern Europe.

In the following, I will outline the impact of the NEG on national labour market policies. The individual case analysis presented here relates to the interaction between the European level and French labour market policy. The decision to study the French case is justified by the fact that most critical studies focus on the influence of the NEG on the so-called ‘deficit countries’ of the European periphery. Member states from the centre of the European division of labour go largely unaddressed. Specifically, this article focuses on the example of the regulation of the French labour market under Francois Hollande to illustrate that European austerity also has a disciplinary effect on countries seen as existing within the European core which have been hit less hard by the crisis thus far.

My central argument is that the NEG has established a New European Labour Market Policy Regime (NLMP) that limits the scope and actionability of national labour market policy by defining a ‘corset of specifications and recommendations’ (I/BMAS_1). In contrast to what various authors suggest when using the term ‘European Interventionism’, the NLMP does not function according to the top-down principle. Furthermore, the NLMP must be understood as a multi-scale interplay between the national and the European scale level, in which social disputes take place and are structured by it.

My second argument is that the NLMP follows a market-liberal thrust, that is, it enforces a competitive form of wage regulation. By concentrating on price competitiveness, the NLMP guidelines aim to bring about structural changes in labour market regulation, particularly to restrict the political room for manoeuvre on the part of trade unions and workers’ organisations, thereby reducing wage costs and increasing the profitability of capital (Altvater 1978). This is achieved by decentralising wage formation and collective bargaining systems and by ‘flexibilising’ workers’ rights. This market-liberal thrust is rooted in the specific materialism of the European state apparatuses, including their strategic selectivity towards transnational capital fractions. Following Stockhammer and Köhler (2015), I argue that the dominant capital fractions within the national power blocs are the central beneficiaries of the NLMP, as they represent those actors who, due to their structural power resources, are able to articulate their interests powerfully on both scales. I thus will demonstrate that the dominant factions of French capital used the European scale to break the national balance of power and impose their own interests.

The two arguments relate to the two levels discussed below. The first is the level of interaction between the EU and member states within the New Economic Government. On the other hand, there is the level of political conflict in the context of labour market reforms. The article is structured as follows: (1) the general thrust of Europe’s political response to the crisis will be presented. Building on this, (2) labour market interventionism will be characterised on the basis of the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) for France from 2011 to 2016 in order to (3) identify the influence of the EU on two regulatory labour market reform projects, the Macron Law and the El Khomri Law.

Theoretical framework

For the theoretical conceptualisation of the two levels of analysis, I adopt a neo-Poulantzian perspective expanded via regulation theory (Bieling 2014a; Bieling & Brand 2015). The crucial point of the neo-Poulantzian understanding of the state is that the state is not conceived as neutral terrain, but as a strategic field of conflict between classes and class factions (Poulantzas 2000). Accordingly, the institutional architecture of the state as well as the specific form of policy formulation must be understood as the condensed result of social struggles. Accordingly, the state is characterised by ‘strategic selectivity’ (Jessop & Sum 2006: 98), that is, it reflects in a materialistic and condensed form the prevailing power relations between social classes in the respective policy field. As a result, the state apparatuses favour certain interests over others by acting as a kind of filter, allowing social forces to gain access to the state’s decision-making processes and thus to co-determine policies (Sum & Jessop 2014).

In order to analytically grasp the interplay between politics on the national and the European level, the EU will be conceptualised according to Nicos Poulantzas’ (2000) theoretical reflections on the state as a ‘second-order condensation of societal power relations’ (Brand et al. 2011). This theoretical framework allows understanding the EU as quasi-state entity, where interests of social forces are present on the member states level (first-order condensation) as well as the European level. The specific aspect of the European level is that there the already condensed national balance of power, in the form of nation-state interests, is confronted with the interests of transnational social forces (Bieling & Brand 2015). In this way, transnational capital interests are often double represented. In the French case, the employer organisation MEDEF as a representant of the dominant capital in France is a good example. On the one hand, MEDEF is part of the condensation process in the nation state because they are the dominant part in the national power block. One the other hand, they are also present of the European level in form of a own office in Brussels and as a member of the leading European business association BusinessEurope (Woll 2011).

The Poulantzian perspective on the European Union is expanded in the following to include a regulatory theory perspective (Aglietta 2000; Bieling et al. 2016). It enables an understanding of the institutional processing of contradictions inherent in the system. Labour market policy can thus be understood as a specific regulation of wage relations. According to Hübner (1990: 161), two ideal types can be distinguished. On the one hand, the monopolistic mode of regulation is characterised by a standardised collective bargaining system, the recognition of trade unions and works councils, the decoupling of wage formation from current labour market constellations and the complete enforcement of the wage relationship. In contrast, competitive regulation is characterised by individual employment contracts without a collective bargaining system, partial enforcement of the wage relationship and wage formation that depends on labour market constellations. During the Fordist period, monopolistic regulation of the wage relationship was deeply linked to the respective accumulation models. In France, in particular, wage indexation, national collective bargaining systems and a strong protection of the workforce were the most important components of single-market-centred state-led capitalism (Schmidt 2002: 204). Forms of regulation have been Europeanised over the course of the European integration process. In particular, the regulation of monetary relations was transposed to the European level with the constitution of the EMU. The Europeanisation of the monetary system eliminated national monetary policy and thus the possibility of currency devaluation. At the same time, a competitive integration method was implemented that followed the mode of horizontal integration, that is, competition between national regulatory methods through mutual recognition (Ziltener 1999). Despite the considerable pressure of Europeanisation, there was no uniform European regulation of the wage relationship. On the contrary, the regulation of the wage relationship retained its national character due to its fundamental importance to the respective modes of accumulation (Höpner & Lutter 2014). Attempts to Europeanise the regulation of wage relations by means of indirect enforcement mechanisms have failed. At the same time, however, the common monetary union led to the accumulation of economic imbalances due to the different accumulation methods and increased the pressure for a European regulation of the wage relationship (Stockhammer & Onaran 2012). Against the backdrop of this tension, economic policy control was enforced during the crisis, exerting a fundamental influence on the nation-state regulation of wage relations.

Methods

The following analysis of the influence of the NLMP on French labour market policy is based on data compiled from 17 qualitative guided expert interviews and from a qualitative document analysis, that is, a systematic examination, classification and analysis of various documents such as policy papers and protocols. In the compilation process, the results of the guided expert interviews supplemented and provided substantive support for the qualitative document analysis, producing method triangulation (Flick 2011).

The interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2020 within the framework of my dissertation with representatives of the French and German governments, the European Commission as well as with German, French and European trade unions and business associations. All interviews were transcribed and evaluated according to a predetermined coding scheme within the framework of a qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2010). The focus of the coding was placed on the interactions and institutional processes between the European and the national scale level.

The results of the interviews supported the results of the previous qualitative document analysis. Publicly accessible meeting documents, decrees, directives, contract documents, laws, position papers, working papers, flyers, brochures and press releases from various social groups relating to French labour market policy were all involved in the qualitative document analysis.

European labour market and employment policy in response to the crisis

Before the crisis, European labour market and employment policy were constantly in flux. Despite various initiatives demanding it become more binding, it maintained a largely symbolic character. While instruments for harmonising European labour market and employment policy such as employment policy guidelines and the principles of ‘flexicurity’ did exist, there were no sanction mechanisms to ensure the implementation of recommended measures (Erne 2015; Nanz & La Porte 2004: 270).

This situation changed following the European debt crisis. The implementation of the NEG encompassed a series of measures aiming to coordinate European economic policy, successively enacted through various projects beginning in early 2010. Modifications to the EU constitution in the wake of the crisis were precipitated by a narrative shift within Europe that was fundamentally initiated and moderated by EU institutions (Heinrich 2015). How the crisis and its causes were interpreted was just as contested as potential steps to solve it. Until spring 2010, a far-reaching and polarised debate between Southern and Northern European countries could be observed (Bieling 2012).

The Southern European countries led by France situated the main causes of the crisis in the asymmetrical structures of the EMU and in the current account surpluses of the export-oriented euro countries, arguing for European economic governance, the introduction of Eurobonds and a collective fiscal transfer mechanism (Dyson 2010; I/BMF; I/Trésor). By contrast, the Northern European member states saw the high national debt and the low price competitiveness of some euro area states as the main cause of the crisis. They advocated for a tightening of austerity policy criteria and a stability-oriented course for the European Central Bank (ECB). The introduction of collective fiscal transfer mechanisms or a joint economic government was strictly rejected and deliberately prevented by invoking the no bail-out clause (Schmidt 2014). The more the crisis came to a head, the more confrontational the different and competing crisis narratives became, partly because the conflict itself reflected the different accumulation regimes and regulatory methods as well as the creditor–debtor relationship in the EU (Overbeek 2012).

Over the course of European crisis, coordination through the institutionalisation of the pan-European aid programmes European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the Commission and the ECB began to intervene in order to moderate the conflictual dynamic between the major EU member states. Via a problem-oriented and technocratic form of articulation achieved through numerous initiatives on the part of European institutions, the various competing crisis narratives were converted into a mode of thinking unified by an orientation around competition (Heinrich & Jessop 2015). Through the intended connection with already institutionalised EU structures, with European directives and with agreements, the Commission rejuvenated above all the discourse of competition that had already been formulated in the Lisbon Strategy while intensifying it within a newly created elite European consensus (Schmidt 2014). The crisis was framed as a crisis of competition, the surmounting of which was discursively coupled with the surmounting of competitive differences in the Eurozone. The return to both fiscal discipline and far-reaching monitoring of national economic policies was declared a cornerstone of a future European growth strategy, while alternative approaches to solving the crisis were delegitimised (Heinrich 2015).

With the victory of the hegemonic crisis narrative and the restriction of analytical focus to (price) competitiveness, the political battlefield of the previous phases of the crisis was shifted, alternative political approaches were disarticulated and national policies on labour market regulation and wages became the focus of the European crisis response. With attention turned to competitiveness, national labour market regulations and wage developments became the main instruments of adjustment for overcoming the crisis. The EU response to the crisis is thus based on the assumption that its causes could be remedied by a stronger European convergence in labour market regulation (Degryse et al. 2013). The narrative linking of labour market regulation in EU member states with European competitiveness served to justify European austerity politics, which solidified – on the foundation of already existing labour market and employment procedures – a comprehensive system for controlling national labour market regulation and wage policy (Van Gyes & Schulten 2015).

Based on the crisis narrative, from 2010 to 2013, a comprehensive system of monitoring, evaluation and discipline was implemented in the form of a modular system. Based on existing instruments and regulations, the newly created governance mechanisms established a comprehensive and closely entwined network of labour market policy guidelines and recommendations, which can be referred to as the NLMP. It is impossible to explain the individual building blocks in detail, but I will briefly outline its three pillars:

The weakest pillar of NLMP manifests itself in the policy formulations of the CSRs put forward by the European Semester. The recommendations gained a binding character through the implementation of financial sanctions, although the Commission has yet to levy penalty fines. The pressure to implement the recommendations derives primarily from the implicit threat of fines or the introduction of a corrective action plan.

The NLMP also involves the response to the crisis by the ECB. In return for the purchase of government bonds – Securities Markets Programme (SMP), Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), Quantitative Easing (QE) – the ECB demands policy reforms in the spheres of labour market and welfare policy, among others (Barbier 2015). This line was still pursued informally at the start of the crisis (such as in Italy in 2011). However, since the 2012 announcement by the ECB to buy up unlimited government bonds when countries declare themselves open to structural reforms, it has constituted official Central Bank policy.

The third pillar comprises the institutionalised rescue measures for the eurozone and the established credit policy for the non-euro states. In both cases, the so-called troika formed by ECB, the EU Commission and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed with the governments on extensive structural reforms in return for loans (within the framework of the EFSF or later the ESM or within the framework of a so-called balance of payments loans according to Article 143 TFEU). The labour market and wage formation structures were at the heart of the structural reforms (Müller 2015; Theodoropoulou 2016). This pillar represents the strongest form of influence on national labour market policies. It not only restricts the framework conditions for a national labour market policy, but also intervenes concretely into the labour market and collective bargaining policy structures of the EU member states. This has been described as ‘labour market political interventionism’ by Thorsten Schulten and Torsten Müller (2015).

The three pillars represent a new structure of labour market policy regulation on the European level, which resulting from the concrete interaction of rule-based, formal and informal as well as institutionalised structures, forums and committees. These are closely interlinked and form the ensemble that can be described as the NLMP (Syrovatka 2018: 86–87).

The main thrust of the NLMP is to promote moderate wage development, decentralisation of collective bargaining systems and a flexibilisation of labour law (Miró 2019). The focus is on a flexibilisation of wages as a key macroeconomic adjustment factor. As possibilities for direct political control often exist only in the sphere of the public sector and with regard to the level of legal minimum wages, flexibilisation of wages can only be achieved by deregulating the wage-setting environment, decentralising wage-setting to the company level and weakening trade unions. This general policy thrust is exemplified by a 2012 paper produced by the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs at the Commission (DG ECFIN). With the goal of creating a ‘business-friendly environment’ (European Commission 2012a: 75), the DG ECFIN develops numerous recommendations found in the paper for reforms to benefit businesses, including weakening employee protections against termination, raising the retirement age, cutting unemployment support, lowering the minimum wage, reducing collective bargaining coverage and decentralising the collective bargaining system. In the medium term, these measures aim to achieve an ‘overall reduction in the wage-setting power of trade unions’ (European Commission 2012a: 104).

French labour market regulation under pressure

In April 2009, the Commission initiated an excessive deficit procedure against France. As a consequence of economic stimulus packages and bank bail-outs, French national debt rose much more sharply in 2008 than in the previous year (Jabko & Massoc 2012). However, with the initiation of the procedure, French labour market regulation increasingly became the focus of the Commission (I/DGECFIN_3). Particularly following the implementation of constitutional measures in the wake of the crises and the 2012 procedure for correcting macroeconomic imbalances, French labour market regulation was subjected to special monitoring.

Entirely consummate with the hegemonic crisis narrative, the Council continuously stated in its CSRs from 2011 to 2017 that France was not only suffering from a debt crisis, but also from a fundamental crisis of competitiveness and structural labour market weakness. For the Council, the crisis of competitiveness resulted from both price and non-price competitiveness weaknesses due to excess labour costs and inflexibility of businesses in ‘all aspects of employment conditions’ (Council of the European Union 2016: 116). Primarily implicated by this view were the minimum wage and its specific form of indexation as well as the ‘high burden’ (Council of the European Union 2016: 116) on employers from taxes and social security contributions. Meanwhile, according to EU institutions, the structural weaknesses of the labour market resulted from its strict segmentation, the cause of which in turn could be found in overly rigid employee protections against termination, as well as in the lack of resources at employment offices and in unemployment policies that were not sufficiently ‘activating’. The consistency with which EU institutions analysed the French crisis was reflected in the recommended measures. In all CSRs between 2011 and 2017, France was urged to curb minimum wage growth, to liberalise regulated industries and professions and loosen provisions governing protections against employee termination.

Despite consistency in the analysis of the causes of the crisis, the focus of the CSRs shifted as the crisis continued to intensify. Since France became subject to macroeconomic imbalance monitoring in 2013, arrangements for labour market regulation have become central to the CSRs. Prior to 2012, recommendations for labour market regulation tended to be kept more general and largely blame high labour costs as the cause of the (price-)competitive weakness, yet more detailed analyses of and recommendations for labour market policy can be detected thereafter.

Despite the analysis being expanded to involve non-price competitive factors, the recommended measures remained relatively general, with CSRs focusing on using labour market and wage policy to promote price competitiveness. In particular, wage-setting and labour regulations such as the 35-hour workweek became the focus of the European analysis of competitiveness. Hence, the Council of the European Union (2013) wrote in the CSRs for France: ‘Wage-setting in France tends to result in distortion of the wage structure and limit the ability to firms to adjust wages in economic downturns’ (Council of the European Union 2014: 45). According to this view, the specific form of wage-setting and its tie to minimum wage growth stood counterposed to development in productivity and led to reduced competitiveness and profit margins for companies (Council of the European Union 2015b). Despite the 1982 Auroux Laws, collective bargaining in France continued to be conducted on the sectoral level, although exceptions had been possible since then. Thus, the Council emphatically recommended a reform and decentralisation of the wage-setting system from the sectoral level to the company level ‘to ensure that wages [would] evolve inline with productivity’ (Council of the European Union 2015b: 55) and that means of circumventing the sectoral level in collective bargaining would be created. Furthermore, the Council criticised existing labour market policy arrangements and employee protections against termination as too rigid, arguing these significantly constrained companies ‘ability to respond to economic fluctuations’. According to this view, regulations of the number of legally permitted work hours were particularly responsible for business’s lack of economic competitiveness. Therefore, the Council of the European Union (2015b) recommended a flexibilisation of working time and a further loosening of termination protections:

Reform the labour law to provide more incentives for employers to hire on openended contracts. Facilitate take up of derogations at company and branch level from general legal provisions, in particular as regards working time arrangements. (p. 55)

At the same time, European institutions linked their recommendations for labour market regulations with the concrete threat of financial penalties. In a report from May 2013, the Commission determined that the demand-oriented measures of the recently elected French government under Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault contradicted the CSRs. The Commission subsequently increased its pressure on France, making a deadline extension for the reduction of budgetary deficits contingent on stricter surveillance while threatening the imposition of financial penalties. France was required to submit a plan of action and an ‘economic partnership programme’ and to outline before the Commission and the Council the planned structural measures (Syrovatka 2016). After the deadline extension expired, this procedure was repeated again, with the Commission threatening in an official resolution in February 2015 for the Council to impose its own plan of corrective action on France along with financial sanctions (European Commission 2015c). While this measure was disregarded in the bill passed by the Council itself, a 6-month timeframe was set during which the country would have to implement concrete measures while being subjected to renewed monitoring (Council of the European Union 2015c; DG ECFIN 2015). In addition, the Commission was stipulated that the intensified surveillance of reform steps during this period would primarily focus on the sphere of labour market regulation (Council of the European Union 2015c; European Commission 2016).

In addition to European institutions, government politicians from various other EU member states also commented repeatedly on the labour market policy situation in France (Lux 2016). In particular, members of the German federal government and parliamentarians from the governing parties issued repeated public statements of varying intensity in favour of an extensive reform of the French labour market (Brookings Institution 2015). In addition, the German federal government indicated on multiple occasions that it could refuse to agree to an extension of the deficit in the Council if the French government did not begin taking decisive steps towards labour market reform (Clift & Ryner 2014).

All in all, it is apparent that the pressure on France to implement labour market reforms markedly increased between the election of Francois Hollande as president and the 2013 European Semester. During that time, French labour market regulation was publicly criticised from various quarters while the Commission repeatedly threatened the country with financial sanctions. In what follows, the influence of European institutions and their policy recommendations will be depicted through the example of the implementation and substantive configuration of two central projects aimed at labour market regulatory reform. While the initial domestic political conditions and conflicts involved can only be touched upon briefly here, it is important to recognise their relevance to the scope and quality of the implementation of European recommendations in member states.

‘Sending Signals to Our European Partners’: The Macron Law

The November 2014 Loi pour la croissance, l’activité et l’égalité des chances économiques,² named for then-Economic Minister Emmanuel Macron, marked the first extensive labour market package presented by the government of Manuel Valls. While businesses had already received significant tax relief with the Pacté de responsabilité and the introduction of the so-called CICE programme, the Loi Macron contained a whole series of regulatory measures targeting the labour market and interventions into labour relations.

The economic policy turn initiated by the government along with it resulted, on the one hand, from the domestic and foreign policy failure of neo-Keynesianism during the first phase of Hollande’s time in office. Reforms he had promised during his election campaign – such as regulating the banks and the financial sector – were watered down or not taken up at all. At the same time, the French government remained trapped in a defensive position on the European level. A serious confrontation between the German government regarding the further direction of the crisis response was still nowhere in sight. Instead, the French government advocated for a one-sided austerity policy and voted for the very European fiscal package it had vehemently opposed during the presidential campaign. Due to Germany’s blockade mentality, several European policy initiatives either failed altogether or, as in the case of the European growth package, failed to achieve any serious results.

On the other hand, the European Union’s competition-oriented crisis narrative asserted itself on the national level. Mediated through the widely reported upon ‘Gallois Report’ from former Airbus CEO Louis Gallois, a publicity campaign run by France’s largest industrial association MEDEF, and the recommendations of the Commission, the crisis was re-framed as a crisis of competitiveness, situating its causes in labour market regulation and relatively high wage costs compared with the rest of Europe (Aghion et al. 2014; Lemoine 2016).

The German economy’s speedy recovery following the outbreak of the crisis allowed the German labour market reforms contained in Agenda 2010 to become the model for French labour market renewal (Duval 2013; Neumann 2017). Above all, MEDEF referred increasingly positively to the German labour market reforms (I/MEDEF_1). In the large-scale campaign ‘France2020’, which, following the German agenda, sketched out a future vision of a ‘competitive France’ in the year 2020, MEDEF emphasised the necessity of competitive businesses to overcome unemployment and the growth crisis (I/MEDEF_1). At its core, the argumentation thus advocated for the fundamental restructuring of the French labour market through extensive deregulation and flexibilisation (Mouvement des entreprises de France (MEDEF) 2014b):

This is of course an example! Of course it is! Cost competitiveness, the reduction of some taxes, the reduction of some costs such as the unemployment scheme and the labour market. We are not saying that everything was perfect on the Schröder Agenda, but it is an example of the will to achieve cohesion. Provided that the term economy comes from business, then a labour market policy must be compatible with the competitiveness of a company. We need a supply policy, not a demand policy. (I/MEDEF_2)

In three related position papers, MEDEF listed a number of fundamental, sector-specific reform proposals. These included, among others, flexibilising working hours and termination protection, allowing agreements between negotiating partners to take place at the company level rather than the sector level and creating exemptions from minimum wage laws (MEDEF 2014a, 2014b). With these, in part, highly concrete proposal, MEDEF effectively put the Socialist government under considerable pressure to act with regards to policy reform (I/Trésor).

In addition to domestic political pressure, pressure came from the European level. The Macron Law was presented in October 2014, shortly before the Commission’s decision on the extension of the deadline for the correction of the excessive deficit procedure, which had been pending since 2009. Prior to this, the Commission, and in particular Economic Commissioner Moscovici, had threatened to impose fines and initiate proceedings, citing significant deviations from the Stability and Grown Pact (SGP).³ However, since the reform plans of then-Minister of Economy Macron foresaw the implementation of large parts of the European demands, the Commission extended the correction periods for the excessive deficit, first by 6 months in November 2014 and then by 2 years in April 2015 until 2017 (Council of the European Union 2015c). This extension was highly controversial in the Commission, as the Commissioner for Monetary Affairs, Vladis Dombrowski, was already pushing for fines of 4 billion euros, while the Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Moscovici, opposed them (Pauly 2015: 72). Accordingly, the Commission demanded a clear sign of the will to reform and applied considerable pressure towards the rapid implementation of the Loi Macron (Ducourtieux 2015; Moscovici 2015).

The Commission’s recommendations were similar to MEDEF’s demands in many respects. In an extensive review of France from March 2014, the Commission called for a faster reduction in labour costs and criticised the limited steps that had been taken towards reforming labour market regulation:

Further efforts to reduce the cost of labour appear warranted. France is among the countries in the European Union where the cost of labour is the highest. [. . .] Despite efforts to maintain competitive prices, the competitiveness of French firms is hampered by the high cost of labour. Indeed, French firms’ profit margins are the lowest in the EU [. . .]. Measures planned so far will not be sufficient to fully restore the profitability of non-financial companies. (European Commission 2014b)

The Commission took up the central labour market policy demands of MEDEF and articulated them in their specific form as CSRs. The interests of the French bourgeoisie, therefore, were not only incorporated into the condensation processes at the national level, but also influenced the Commission’s country-specific policy:

And if we look at the Commission’s various recommendations, it is exactly what we think: lower public spending, lower taxation, lower wages, deregulation of the labour market, etc. [. . .] Our problem is unemployment, which, as you know, is far too high! It is socially unacceptable. And this government still believes it must give more protection to the workers to prevent unemployment. But this simply does not work! You will have more employment if you take care of the unemployed, not if you give more protection to the workers. That does not work. (I/MEDEF_1)

The proximity of the Commission to transnational capital and the European and national employers’ associations results fundamentally from the conception of the integration process as an economic union (Van Apeldoorn 2009). Strategic selectivity, particularly with regard to transnational capital, is deeply ingrained in the material framework of the Commission (Jessop 2013: 317; Van Apeldoorn 2002). Moreover, due to the fragmented European civil society and the strong executive burden of European politics, the relative autonomy of European state apparatuses vis-à-vis transnational articulation of interests is less pronounced than at national level (Bieling 2010). While the interests of the subaltern classes are often included in the condensation process at the national level, they are largely ignored at the European level due to national divisions and the associated weakness of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) (Bieling & Brand 2015: 196–197). This was particularly evident during the crisis from 2009 onwards, when the Commission based its policy on the assessments of transnational business organisations and maintained permanent dialogue structures with them, while European trade unions were largely isolated (I/ERT; I/BusinessEurope; I/ETUC_1; I/ETUC_2).

The French government responded to MEDEF’s campaign and European pressure by having newly appointed Minister of Economy Emmanuel Macron seek more dialogue with the business associations in the lead-up to the legislative process.⁴ At the same time, Macron moved towards MEDEF’s argumentation and promoted structural reforms in labour market as the way to overcome the crisis.⁵ Accordingly, the substantive configuration of the reform package primarily aimed at the price competitiveness of the French economy, concurring with numerous policy recommendations made by European institutions. In the foreground of the reform package stood above all liberalisation of access to hitherto restricted professions, the creation of legal security for employers with regard to terminations and mass layoffs and the flexibilisation of employees’ rights, particularly termination protection (Sterdyniak 2015). Among others, the reform package contained an expansion of Sunday and night-time labour, an extension of so-called ‘employment safeguard agreements’⁶ from 2 to 5 years, an abolition of prison sentences for the impediment of employee representatives and a comprehensive loosening of termination protection in a way that allowed for employees to be terminated without notice if they rejected company agreements regarding work hours and wage reduction during crisis periods.

Despite of the major interventions in labour regulation contained in the Macron Law, trade unions were not able to exert much influence on the legislative process or even mobilise a sizable protest movement. While all unions decidedly rejected the draft of the law, they pursued divergent strategies. The second-largest French union, the social-democratic CFDT, welcomed a reform to employment jurisdiction and the planned liberalisation of professions restricted by the state in general; it criticised the concomitant loosening of termination protection and planned expansion of Sunday labour. In contrast to the left-wing unions (CGT, FO, SUD, FSU), the reform-oriented unions (CFDT, CFC-CGC, UNSA, CFTC) led by the CFDT avoided all confrontation with the government and instead sought to weaken the reform package through informal negotiations. However, hardly more than one 100,000 people across France took to the streets in the demonstrations held in December 2014 and January 2015.

Resistance to the labour market laws found much greater articulation within the PS and its groups in the National Assembly. A group of Socialist representatives calling Frondeurs organised themselves into an inner-party opposition to the government, demanding an end to austerity and a demand-oriented economic policy. Their criticism of the Macron Law mainly focused on the expansion of Sunday and night-time labour as well as the loosening of labour law. In parliament, they announced they would reject the economic minister’s reform package. However, the government did not respond to the criticism of its own representatives, instead attempted to compel the Frondeurs to vote for the package with threats and intimidation.⁷ Yet given that a parliamentary majority for the law was no longer assured due to the numerous declarations of intent from Socialist representatives to vote against the draft or to abstain from voting, the government decided to tie the vote on the reform package to a vote of confidence. Against the backdrop of domestic and international political tensions as well as a vanishing majority in the National Assembly, the Valls government passed reforms without consulting its social partners and by bypassing parliament for the first time. With the help of §49-3, the reform programme was enacted without a parliamentary vote in February 2015. Thus, as Bazin (2015: 6) emphasises, the Macron law represented a paradigm shift in French policy reform both in terms of substance as well its formal implementation.

The authoritarian manner in which the Macron Law was implemented made clear the lack of leeway the French government had to negotiate, weaken the reform package or make concessions to its critics. Unlike any previous government, it exhibited virtually no complaisance in the substantive configuration of the reform package. Even more dramatically than in the case of the 2010 pension reforms, the French government’s room for manoeuvre for material concessions was severely restricted and could involve neither the trade unions nor the left wing of its own party in the reform strategy. In addition to growing domestic political pressure from business associations as well as from the conservative opposition,⁸ this was the result of the pressure of the EU (Hassenteufel & Palier 2015).

As mentioned above, the Commission’s CSRs (European Commission 2014a) and the recommendations of the Council of the European Union (2014) were made in the context of the excessive deficit procedure. This added weight to the CSRs. At the same time, German government politicians made their approval of the extension of the deadline in the Council dependent on the successful implementation of the Macron Law (Lux 2018: 223ff.). In November 2014, the German government demanded a long-term reform roadmap in return for its approval of the deadline extension (Orange 2016). This public threat addressed to the French government was underscored by various institutional initiatives such as the Enderlein and Pisani-Ferry (2014) report as well as several media interventions from politicians in the German government (Lux 2016). In light of these demands, Minister of Economy Emmanuel Macron, the leading figure in the reform process, wanted the package to be understood above all as a ‘signal réformiste adressé aux partenaires européens, Allemagne en tête’⁹ – a signal to EU institutions and the German government of France’s own desire to reform.

What we can see in the example of the Macron Law is a process of condensation that no longer includes only the nation-state level, but also the European dimension. Through the NLMP, the concrete forms of wage-relation regulation are no longer the result of a national, that is, horizontal, condensation process. Rather, the vertical, that is, in this case, the European factors of influence, must be taken into account. Through strategically clever action on the part of French capital, their interests have inscribed into the condensation processes at both the national and European levels. As a result, European politics, as a second-order condensation, had an effect on the nation-state condensation process and limited both the form and the content of the Macron Law. We can see this form of scale-jumping even more clearly in the implementation process of the El Khomri Law.

The El Khomri law

The second major labour market reform package was introduced by the French government in February 2016. The draft law was preceded by a widespread public discussion on the Code du travail, criticised from various quarters as confusing and complicated (Barthélemy & Cette 2015). Increasingly, it was regarded as the cause of the high unemployment rate, and even left-wing labour lawyers and trade union activists spoke out in favour of a fundamental simplification and tidying up of French labour law (Badinter & Lyon-Caen 2015). Following these critiques, Jean-Denis Combrexelle (2015) worked out suggestions for labour law reform in the spring of 2015. Against the demand for a simplification of labour law, his report recommended a fundamental reorganisation of the collective bargaining system and a shifting of social partner negotiations from the sectoral level to the company level.

On the basis of the Combrexelle Report, the French Ministry of Labour put together a draft law foreseeing extensive changes in the area of working time and a renewed strengthening of the company level in negotiations between social partners. The 35-hour workweek officially remained untouched in the report’s basic principles, yet it was so heavily watered down that its regulatory function was fundamentally called into question. In short, the measures in the El Khomri Law aimed at a loosening and watering down of overtime regulations,¹⁰ a strengthening of bargaining agreements on the company level and loosening of termination protection.

Both the recommendations and the El Khomri Law focused on the reform of labour law and the associated decentralisation of the wage formation system by creating ‘greater scope [for enterprises] to adjust wages and working hours to the economic situation of the enterprise’ (Council of the European Union 2015b: 54). Since 2014, EU institutions had demanded a flexibilisation of the wage-setting system and of termination protection in addition to a fundamental reform of labour law in the CSRs. Moreover, France was pressured by the extension of the correction deadlines to reduce its excessive deficit. In the wake of Paris terrorist attacks in Paris, the French government announced it would be forced to break with the Maastricht criteria due to increased police and military expenditures.¹¹ Therefore, EU institutions pushed for renewed reforms to labour market regulation, which the French government also viewed as necessary to send a strong signal regarding reforms to its European partners (I/DGECFIN_1). The German government in particular increased the pressure on the French government considerably and pushed for further reforms (Blome et al. 2014; Orange 2016).

Pressure from the European level has been maintained continuously. The Commission accompanied the domestic debate in France with various papers. In these, it pressed for a reform of labour law and accompanied its threats of penalties under the excessive deficit procedure with further threats under the macroeconomic imbalance procedure. The Commission had already criticised macroeconomic imbalances in France in 2014, which it attributed to the country’s rigid labour law and the dominance of sector-wide collective agreements, claiming such regulations limit ‘the ability of firms to negotiate downward wage adjustment’ (European Commission 2014b: 31). In 2015, it increased the pressure once again and attested to France ‘excessive imbalances’. Together with Bulgaria, France was placed in the second highest level (level 5) of the imbalances procedure. Thus, France was threatened with a ‘procedure in case of excessive imbalances’ that would have resulted in substantial fines should the Commission’s recommendations not flowed (European Commission 2015a). The various instruments of NEG now played together and created massive pressure to act (I/Trésor). According to calculations by the NGO Corporate Europe Observatory, France was threatened with fines of 11 billion euros as a result of the interlocking of the deficit procedure and the macroeconomic imbalances procedure.

The Commission’s dealings with the French government also became tougher. The 2015 In-Depth Review was aimed directly at French labour market policy. Industry-wide agreements were described as ‘labour market rigidities’ and labour law as ‘important burden on companies’ (European Commission 2015b: 20–21). Particular attention continued to be devoted to wage formation processes and the lack of flexibility to deviate from industry agreements:

The wage bargaining process in France is characterised by the interaction of industry wide agreements and company-level negotiations, with a relatively stronger role played by the industry-wide agreements and few possibilities to derogate by firm-level agreements. As already underlined in the 2014 In–Depth Review, such agreements apply to unionised and non-unionised workers and extension mechanisms are widespread. Recent reforms have created only limited flexibility for employers to depart from industry-wide agreements. (European Commission 2015b: 17)

The 2015 CSRs also exhibited a clearly detailed character. For the first time, they explicitly called for a relaxation of dismissal protection and a reform of working time regulations. Possibilities of deviation from industry agreements were also ‘recommended’ (European Commission 2015c: 7). With regard to both working time regulations and wage formation, the company level is to be more closely involved and the dominance of the sectoral-level broken (European Commission 2015c: 4).

The individual recommendations seem to have been agreed upon with the French employers’ federation MEDEF in advance. According to the European Transparency Register, there were a total of eight meetings between MEDEF and various Commissioners between February and May 2015 (European Commission 2018b). On 26 March 2015, a meeting was even held in Brussels between MEDEF, Monetary Commissioner Vladis Dombrowski and two other high-ranking Commission officials, at which only the CSRs for France were discussed (European Commission 2018b). The association of large French private companies AFEP also met four times with representatives of the Commission during the same period (European Commission 2018a; I/afep).

Even before the El Khomri Law, both business associations were the central driving forces behind labour market deregulation and labour law reform (Syrovatka 2016: 97–188). For example, in 2007, in a position paper entitled ‘Besoin d’air’ (We need air), MEDEF complained about the inflexibility of labour law regulations and called for the upgrading of the company level in collective bargaining and the de facto abolition of the 35-hour workweek by creating opportunities for deviation (Parisot 2007). The MEDEF campaign, to restructure the French labour market during the crisis, formulated along the lines of the German Agenda 2010, also included a comprehensive programme of deregulation and liberalisation, focusing on the reform of labour law and the erosion of the 35-hour workweek (MEDEF 2014b: 28–33). Only shortly after the passing of the Macron Law in autumn 2015, MEDEF (2015b) pleaded for a reform of labour law and a strengthening of company agreements. Thus, MEDEF welcomed the government’s reform plans and pledged its support, although it criticised that the government maintained the 35-hour workweek given further payment obligations (MEDEF 2015a). However, MEDEF also feared a weakening of supply-side orientation. Its actions during the legislative process thus aimed to exert influence on both public opinion as well as on the decision-making process itself (Méda 2017).

The legislative process between February and August 2016 was accompanied by strong protests featuring militant strikes and nationwide placements (‘Nuit Debout’). The pressure from the streets to withdraw the labour law reform was audible and at times paralysed the entire country. Accordingly, both the Commission and the employers’ associations followed the legislative process intensively and remained present in the public debate.

As early as February, the Commission signalled its support for the reform and, in its 2016 In-Depth Review, called the planned labour law reform a necessary key to curbing unit labour cost developments and restoring France’s price competitiveness (European Commission 2016: 2). On the other hand, France was once again found to have excessive macroeconomic imbalances, and the 2015 CSR labour market policy demands were emphatically repeated. In addition to the formal reports and recommendations, the Commission intervened in the media and public debate via interviews and statements. In May, for example, in response to the mass protests, Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, called a possible watering down of the El Khomri Law a ‘serious mistake’ (Boff 2016). Shortly afterwards, Currency Commissioner Dombrowski praised the labour law reforms as a ‘initiative qui est destinée à répondre aux rigidités du marché du travail’ (Robert 2016). At the height of the disputes with the trade unions, even then-President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, interfered and described the reversal of the order of precedence in collective agreements and the abolition of the principle of favouritism as a prerequisite for the law to be able to be implemented ‘qui va dans le bon sens’ (BFMTV 2016).

In line with the pressure coming from the European level, the two business associations also increased domestic political pressure by deploying their structural power. Therefore, MEDEF and AFEP publicly threatened to shift jobs and investments to the Southern European crisis states (Les Économistes Atterrés 2016). At the same time, MEDEF and CGPME, the smaller association of small- and medium-sized enterprises, repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the tripartite unemployment insurance scheme and break off negotiations over its reform. The employers’ associations also engaged in a confrontation with the striking unions. The chairman of MEDEF, Pierre Gattaz, for example, called on the police to take tough action against the strikers, who he described as terrorists, in an interview.¹² Accordingly, any offer of negotiation with the unions was rejected by MEDEF. Along with the Commission and the employers’ associations, the reformist trade unions also supported the labour law reform. The reformist trade unions CFDT, CFE-CGC and UNSA pursued a strategy of cooperation and social partnership with the government (Andolfatto & Labbé 2016a). From the beginning, they supported a fundamental reform of labour laws, although they did attempt to weaken the reform package in certain points through informal negotiations with the government. With this strategy, they successfully lobbied for the removal of the law of the designated upper limits of employee compensation. In dialogue with the business associations and the government, the strategy of the reform-oriented unions sought to work out a common agreement and form a competitive corporatist bloc with the employers and the Socialist government (Syrovatka 2016: 208).

In August 2016, following strong protests and strikes by the left-wing trade unions and the government’s own socialist faction, labour law reform was passed with the help of the emergency paragraph §49-3 and the circumvention of parliament (Audouy 2016). The influence of the European level in pushing through the El Khomri Law was significantly greater than an year earlier during the enactment of the Macron Law. Exerting influence on the legislative process through discursive and institutional interventions may have primarily been due to the political resistance from unions and activists.

Resistance at the national level has made European instruments and mechanisms more important for enforcing labour law reform. In the words of Poulantzas, we can speak of a ‘successive dislocation and displacement’ of power within the European state apparatus, because ‘the state is not a monolithic block but a strategic field’ (Poulantzas 2000: 138). In this strategic field, different social forces fight at different levels of scale (Brand et al. 2011). Through the skilful action of the dominant fractions of French capital, they were able to inscribe themselves into the condensation processes at both the European and national level. In our concrete case, this means that the shifting of power between the apparatuses has had a retroactive effect on the processes of condensation in the national framework and has been structured by European policies. The condensed balance of power at the European level, in the form of Commission policy, strengthened the dominant position of the national competitive corporatist bloc consisting of the Socialist government, the hegemonic capital fractions and reform-oriented trade unions. In the case of the El Khomri Law, the European level thus represented the decisive political pressure point to prevent a change in the national balance of forces and thus guarantee enforcement even against the resistance of large swathes of the population

Conclusion

The French example demonstrates that a new vertical mode of European integration has emerged in the crisis (Erne 2018). The various reforms of the EU-level established a new constitutional arrangement in the wake of the crisis, leading to emergence of the NLMP. There has been a partial Europeanisation of regulatory forms of the wage relationship (Becker et al. 2015). Depending on its specific form, the NLMP exerts either direct or indirect influence on the specific regulation of the wage relationship in the member states. It affects not only the peripheral member states of the EU but also the so-called core states such as France. In addition, the French example shows that even the weakest form of NLMP entailed by the European Semester’s CSRs leads to considerable restrictions on the scope countries are granted regarding labour market regulation.

The article has put forward the thesis that the scope and the quality of NLMP are highly dependent on the sponsors of the reform suggestions within respective countries as well as on national balances of forces. The analysis of the French case study not only confirms this thesis, but at the same time proves that the European level was used by the dominant fractions of French capital as a strategic influencing factor in order to break the balance of forces at the national scale level and thus be able to assert their specific interests. Specifically, the example of the El Khomri Law shows how the dominant fractions of French capital used their access to the Commission to increase pressure on the government. The strategic selectivity of the Commission towards transnational capital actors makes it difficult for progressive actors to become more involved in the NLMP policy formulation process at the European level (I/ETUC_2).

In other words, the French example shows that the condensation processes in the European state apparatuses can have a considerable influence on the constitution of the balance of forces within the nation state through the newly created instruments of economic governance. In the form of CSRs and multilateral surveillance, condensation processes, as second-order condensation, take place at the European level and have a direct effect on and structure the national balance of forces. In doing so, they structure the conflicts between social forces within the framework of the nation state in a specific way, so that the NLMP guidelines can weaken, dampen or even strengthen the effectiveness of individual actors in the national balance of power.

The second thesis of the article was that the NLMP guidelines adhere to a market-liberal thrust, that is, they seek to enforce a competitive form of wage regulation. This thesis was also confirmed using the French example. Both the Macron Law and the El Khomri Law were accompanied by a number of market-liberal labour market policy recommendations from the Commission. These were primarily aimed at decentralising wage formation, dismantling sectoral collective agreements and weakening the trade unions. They were linked to the goal of breaking up the monopolistic wage-relation regulatory structures in order to bolster price competitiveness by reducing wage costs. According to Hübner (1990: 161), almost all measures of the two laws can be assigned to the ideal type of competitive form of wage-relation regulation. The French example also clearly demonstrates that labour market policy interventionism leads to a significant weakening of trade unions and their power to influence national labour market and wage policy. To varying degrees, interventionism promotes and forces through decentralisation of collective bargaining systems and relocation of wage-setting to the company level. This undermines the position of unions and creates a labour market in which collective labour relationships play a subordinate role while promoting market-driven mechanisms in national labour market regulations.

The supply-side and anti-union orientation of the NLMP is not limited to France, but can be observed throughout the EU (Schulten & Müller 2015). Within the framework of the European Semester, it is enforced gradually and through the implementation of a number of small measures, as the French example makes clear. However, in countries under Troika monitoring, collective bargaining and wage-setting systems have been radically altered or even completely destroyed (Theodoropoulou 2018). In the process, the EU has exerted influence over areas in which it previously had not interfered, and in which it moreover has no official jurisdiction according to EU treaties (Oberndorfer 2015). The character of EU labour market and employment policy has not only fundamentally changed, its scope and binding nature have expanded significantly.

Footnotes

Interviews

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Loren Balhorn for proofreading and Roland Erne for their helpful comments.

ORCID iD

Felix Syrovatka

Notes

Author biography

Felix Syrovatka is PhD-Student in Political Science at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen. He is author of “Die Reformpolitik Frankreichs in der Krise: Arbeitsmarkt- und Rentenpolitik vor dem Hintergrund europäischer Krisenbearbeitung”. His research interests include European integration, Labour Policy, the political economy of France and the socio-ecological transformation of industry.

References

Aghion

Cette

Cohen

ÉA

(2014) Changer de modèle. Paris: Jacob.

Aglietta

(2000) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience. London: Verso.

Altvater

(1978) Politische Implikationen der Krisenbereinigung: Überlegungen zu den Austerity-Tendenzen in Westeuropa. PROKLA: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft 8(32): 43–72.

Andolfatto

Labbé

(2016a) La réforme, la rue et les syndicats. Commentaire Numéro 156(4): 825.

Audouy

(2016) La révision de l’article 49 alinéa 3 de la Constitution à l’aune de la pratique. Revue française de droit constitutionnel 107(3): e1.

Badinter

Lyon-Caen

(2015) Le travail et la loi. Paris: FAYARD.

Barbier

(2015) The mutation of the ECB from a monetary to a political institution: Implications for the future of a democratic and social Europe. In: Lechevalier

(ed.) Social Europe – A Dead End: What the Eurozone Crisis Is Doing to Europe’s Social Dimension. Copenhagen: DJØF-Publishing, pp. 159–192.

Barthélemy

Cette

(2015) Réformer le droit du travail. Paris: Odile Jacob.

Bazin

(2015) La loi « Macron » un coup d’essai. Aprés-demain 34: 6–7.

10.

Becker

Jäger

Weissenbacher

(2015) Uneven and dependent development in Europe: The crisis and its implications. In: Jäger

Springler

(eds) Asymmetric Crisis in Europe and Possible Futures:. London: Routledge, pp. 81–97.

11.

BFMTV (2016) Juncker: la loi Travail n’est « pas un attentat contre le droit du travail ». Available at: https://www.bfmtv.com/societe/juncker-la-loi-travail-n-est-pas-un-attentat-contre-le-droit-du-travail-979147.html (accessed 26 October 2018).

12.

Bieling

H-J

(2010) Die Globalisierungs- und Weltordnungspolitik der Europäischen Union. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

13.

Bieling

H-J

(2012) EU facing the crisis: Social and employment policies in times of tight budgets. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 18(3): 255–271.

14.

Bieling

H-J

(2014a) Comparative analysis of capitalism from a regulationist perspective extended by neo-Gramscian IPE. Capital & Class 38(1): 31–43.

15.

Bieling

H-J

(2014b) Shattered expectations: The defeat of European ambitions of global financial reform. Journal of European Public Policy 21(3): 346–366.

16.

Bieling

H-J

(2015) Uneven development and ‘European crisis constitutionalism’, or the reasons for and conditions of a ‘passive revolution in trouble’. In: Jäger

Springler

(eds) Asymmetric Crisis in Europe and Possible Futures:. London: Routledge, pp. 98–113.

17.

Bieling

H-J

Brand

(2015) Competitiveness or emancipation? Rethinking regulation and (counter-)hegemony in times of capitalist crisis. In: Westra

Badeen

Albritton

(eds) The Future of Capitalism after the Financial Crisis: The Varieties of Capitalism Debate in the Age of Austerity. London: Routledge, pp. 184–204.

18.

Bieling

H-J

Buhr

(2015) Welten der Krise in vergleichender Perspektive. In: Bieling

H-J

Buhr

(eds) Europäische Welten in der Krise: Arbeitsbeziehungen und Wohlfahrtsstaaten im Vergleich. Frankfurt a.M: Campus-Verlag, pp. 327–351.

19.

Bieling

H-J

Jäger

Ryner

(2016) Regulation theory and the political economy of the European Union. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54(1): 53–69.

20.

Blome

Heyer

Neukirch

, et al. (2014) Dichter und Alchemisten. DER SPIEGEL, 20 October, pp. 20–22.

21.

Boff

(2016) Pierre Moscovici: «Renoncer à la loi Travail serait une lourde erreur». 20 Minutes, 18 May, p. 2.

22.

Brand

Görg

Wissen

(2011) Second-order condensations of societal power relations: Environmental politics and the internationalization of the state from a neo-poulantzian perspective. Antipode 43(1): 149–175.

23.

Brookings Institution (2015) Eurozone at a crossroads (again): A conversation with Wolfgang Schäuble. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/20150416_germany_eurozone_schauble_transcript.pdf (accessed 25 October 2018).

24.

Clift

Ryner

(2014) Joined at the hip, but pulling apart? Franco-German relations, the Eurozone crisis and the politics of austerity. French Politics 12(2): 136–163.

25.

Combrexelle

J-D

(2015) La négociation collective, le travail et l’emploi: Rapport au Premier ministre. Paris: France Stratégie.

26.

Council of the European Union (2013) Council recommendation of 9 July 2013 on the National Reform Programme 2013 of France and delivering a council opinion on the Stability Programme of France, 2012-2017. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32013H0730%2808%29

27.

Council of the European Union (2014) Council recommendation of 8 July 2014 on the National Reform Programme 2014 of France and delivering a council opinion on the Stability Programme of France. (2014/C 247/09). Brussels.

28.

Council of the European Union (2015b) Council recommendation of 14 July 2015 on the National Reform Programme 2015 of France and delivering a council opinion on the Stability Programme of France. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32015H0818%2815%29

29.

Council of the European Union (2015c) Council recommendation with a view to bringing an end to the excessive government deficit in France. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52015PC0115

30.

Council of the European Union (2016) Council recommendation of 12 July 2016 on the National Reform Programme 2016 of France and delivering a council opinion on the Stability Programme of France. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/0bc0703e-650d-11e6-9b08-01aa75ed71a1

31.

Crespy

Schmidt

(2014) The clash of Titans: France, Germany and the discursive double game of EMU reform. Journal of European Public Policy 21(8): 1085–1101.

32.

Degryse

Jepsen

Pochet

(2013) The euro crisis and its impact on national and European social policies. Available at: https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/13%20WP%202013.05%20Crisis%20impact%20social%20policies%20Web%20version.pdf

33.

DG ECFIN (2015) France – Review of progress on policy measures relevant for the correction of macroeconomic imbalances. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/economic-performance-and-forecasts/economic-performance-country/france/macroeconomic-surveillance-france_en

34.

Ducourtieux C (2015) L’Europe n’a pas à interférer dans le vote grec. Le Monde, 8 January, p. 3.

35.

Duval

(2013) Made in Germany: Le modèle allemand au-delà des mythes. Paris: Seuil.

36.

Dyson

(2010) Norman’s Lament: The Greek and Euro area crisis in historical perspective. New Political Economy 15(4): 597–608.

37.

Enderlein

Pisani-Ferry

(2014) Reformen, Investitionen und Wachstum: Eine Agenda für Frankreich, Deutschland und Europa. Available at: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Studien/empfehlung-enderlein-pisani-ferry.html

38.

Erne

(2015) A supranational regime that nationalizes social conflict: Explaining European trade unions’ difficulties in politicizing European economic governance. Labor History 56(3): 345–368.

39.

Erne

(2018) Labour politics and the EU’s new economic governance regime (European Unions): A new European Research Council project. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 24(2): 237–247.

40.

Erne

(2019) How to analyse a supranational regime that nationalises social conflict? The European crisis, labour politics and methodological nationalism. In: Nanopoulos

Vergis

(eds) The Euro-crisis as a Multi-dimensional Systemic Crisis of the EU:. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 346–368.

41.

European Commission (2012a) Labour market developments in Europe. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2012/2012-labour-market_en.htm

42.

European Commission (2014a) Empfehlung für eine Empfehlung des Rates zum nationalen Reformprogramm Frankreichs 2014 mit einer Stellungnahme des Rates zum Stabilitätsprogramm Frankreichs 2014. Brussels: European Commission.

43.

European Commission (2014b) Macroeconomic Imbalances: France 2014. Brussels: European Commission.

44.

European Commission ( 2015a) European semester 2015: College decisions. Available at: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4504_en.htm (accessed 25 October 2018).

45.

European Commission (2015b) Macroeconomic Imbalances Country Report – France 2015. Brüssel: European Commission.

46.

European Commission (2015c) Recommendation for a council recommendation with a view to bringing an end to the excessive government deficit in France. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ef4658c8-d6e0-44ae-b9c4-136fa7a23549

47.

European Commission (2016) Commission Staff Working Document – Country Report France 2016 Including an In-depth Review on the Prevention and Correction of Macroeconomic Imbalances. Brussels: European Commission.

48.

European Commission (2018a) List of meetings Association Française des Entreprises Privées / French Association of Large Companies has held with Commissioners. Brussels: European Commission.

49.

European Commission (2018b) List of meetings Mouvement des Entreprises de France has held with Commissioners: European Transparency Register. Brussels: European Commission.

50.

Flassbeck

Lapavistas

(2013) The Systemic Crisis of the Euro: True Causes and Effective Theraphies. Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

51.

Flick

(2011) Triangulation: Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

52.

Gill

(2014) Market civilisation, new constitutionalism and world order. In: Gill

Cutler

(eds) New Constitutionalism and World Order:. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 29–44.

53.

Hassenteufel

Palier

(2015) Still the sound of silence? Towards a new phase in the Europeanisation of welfare state policies in France. Comparative European Politics 13(1): 112–130.

54.

Heinrich

(2015) EU governance in crisis: A cultural political economy perspective on European crisis management 2007–2014. Comparative European Politics 13(6): 682–706.

55.

Heinrich

Jessop

(2015) Interpretations of the EU crisis and their policy implementation. In: Jessop

Young

Scherrer

(eds) Financial Cultures and Crisis Dynamics:. London: Routledge, pp. 278–293.

56.

Heyes

Hastings

(2017) Economic and labour market change and policies: Before and beyond austerity in Europe. In: Marino

Roosblad

Penninx

(eds) Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 23–42.

57.

Höpner

Lutter

(2014) One Currency and Many Modes of Wage Formation.: Why the Eurozone Is Too Heterogeneous for the Euro. Cologne: Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung.

58.

Höpner

Lutter

(2018) The diversity of wage regimes: Why the Eurozone is too heterogeneous for the Euro. European Political Science Review 10(01): 71–96.

59.

Hübner

(1990) Theorie der Regulation: Eine kritische Rekonstruktion eines neuen Ansatzes der politischen Ökonomie. Berlin: Ed. Sigma.

60.

Jabko

Massoc

(2012) French capitalism under stress: How Nicolas Sarkozy rescued the banks. Review of International Political Economy 19(4): 562–585.

61.

Jessop

(2013) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

62.

Jessop

Sum

N-L

(2006) Beyond the Regulation Approach: Putting Capitalist Economies in Their Place. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

63.

Kohler

Stockhammer

(2020) Growth models in advanced countries before and after the 2008 crisis: Competitiveness, financial cycles and p austerity. Available at: http://www.postkeynesian.net/downloads/working-papers/Kohler_Stockhammer_2020_PKES-WP_-_Growth_models_after_2008.pdf

64.

La Porte

Cde

Heins

(2015) A new era of European integration? Governance of labour market and social policy since the sovereign debt crisis. Comparative European Politics 13(1): 8–28.

65.

Lemoine

(2016) L’ ordre de la dette: Les infortunes de l’État et la prospérité du marché. Paris: La Découverte.

66.

Les Économistes Atterrés (2016) La loi El Khomri ou comment en finir avec le Code du travail. Available at: https://www.humanite.fr/la-loi-el-khomri-ou-comment-en-finir-avec-le-code-du-travail-600313

67.

Lux

(2016) Disciplining large member states during the crisis: Analyzing the discursive strategies of the EU and German actors on France. Critical Policy Studies 12: 1–17.

68.

Lux

(2018) Krisendiskurse und kapitalistische Entwicklungspfade. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

69.

Mayring

(2010) Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse: Grundlagen und Techniken. Weinheim: Beltz.

70.

Méda

(2017) Pourquoi la gauche de gouvernement a-t-elle oublié le travail? Mouvements 89(1): 32.

71.

Miró

(2019) In the name of competitiveness: A discursive institutionalist analysis of the EU’s approach to labour market structural reform, 2007–2016. Socio-Economic Review 21: 571.

72.

Moscovici

(2015) Commissioner Moscovici’s remarks at the press conference on college decisions on 2015 European semester. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_15_4510

73.

Mouvement des entreprises de France (MEDEF) (2014a) 1 million d’emploi… c’est possible. Available at: https://www.medef.com/fr/content/1-million-demplois-cest-possible

74.

Mouvement des entreprises de France (MEDEF) (2014b) France 2020: Manifeste pour faire gagner la France. Available at: http://www.medef-44.fr/france-2020-publication-du-manifeste-pour-faire-gagner-la-france.html

75.

Mouvement des entreprises de France (MEDEF) (2015a) Loi pour la croissance et l’activité réformer est un exercice difficile, mais la réforme est indispensable. Available at: https://www.medef.com/fr/communique-de-presse/article/loi-pour-la-croissance-et-l-activite-reformer-est-un-exercice-difficile-mais-la-reforme-est-indispensable

76.

Mouvement des entreprises de France (MEDEF) (2015b) Pierre Gattaz sur France2 « Le code du travail est trop compliqué »: Communiqué du presse – 13 November. Available at: https://medef-aura.fr/fr/actualite-nationale/pierre-gattaz-sur-france2-le-code-du-travail-est-trop-complique

77.

Müller

(2015) Die Troika: Kontrolle der Kontrolleure. In: Alemann

U von

Heidbreder

Hummel

Dreyer

Gödde

(eds) Ein Soziales Europa Ist Möglich:. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 261–284.

78.

Müller

Platzer

H-W

(2018) The European trade union federations: Profiles and power resources: Changes and challenges in times of crisis. In: Lehndorff

Dribbusch

Schulten

(eds) Rough Waters: European Trade Unions in a Time of Crises. Brussels: European Trade Union Institute, pp. 303–329.

79.

Müller

Schulten

Zuckerstätter

(2015) Wages and economic performance in Europe. In: van Gyes

Schulten

(eds) Wage Bargaining Under the New European Economic Governance: Alternative Strategies for Inclusive Growth. Brussels: etui, pp. 259–282.

80.

Nanz

La Porte

Cde

(2004) The OMC – A deliberative-democratic mode of governance? The cases of employment and pensions. Journal of European Public Policy 11(2): 267–288.

81.

Neumann

(2017) La bureaucratie liquide. Variations 20: 1–25.

82.

Oberndorfer

(2015) From new constitutionalism to authoritarian constitutionalism: New Economic Governance and the state of European democracy. In: Jäger

Springler

(eds) Asymmetric Crisis in Europe and Possible Futures:. London: Routledge, pp. 186–207.

83.

Orange

(2016) Comment l’Europe a pesé sur la loi El Khomri. Mediapart, 12 June. Available at: https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/120616/comment-leurope-pese-sur-la-loi-el-khomri?onglet=full

84.

Overbeek

(2012) Sovereign debt crisis in Euroland: Root causes and implications for European Integration. The International Spectator 47(1): 30–48.

85.

Overbeek

van Apeldoorn

(eds) (2012) Neoliberalism in Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

86.

Parisot

(ed.) (2007) Besoin d’air. Paris: Seuil.

87.

Pauly

(2015) 111 Stunden Debatte. DER SPIEGEL, 28 February, pp. 72–73.

88.

Poulantzas

(2000) State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso Books.

89.

Robert

(2016) La Commission européenne se réjouit de la loi El Khomri. Available at: https://www.euractiv.fr/section/europe-sociale-emploi/news/la-commission-europeenne-se-rejouit-de-la-loi-el-khomry/?_ga=2.242900555.817791621.1540567743-1393580927.1540567743 (accessed 26 October 2018).

90.

Scharpf

(2011) Monetary union, fiscal crisis and the pre-emption of democracy. Zeitschrift für Staats- und Europawissenschaften 9(2): 163–198.

91.

Scharpf

(2015) After the crash: A perspective on multilevel European Democracy. European Law Journal 21(3): 384–405.

92.

Schmidt

(2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

93.

Schmidt

(2014) Speaking to the markets or to the people? A discursive institutionalist analysis of the EU’s Sovereign debt crisis. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 16(1): 188–209.

94.

Schmidt

(2016) Reinterpreting the rules ‘by stealth’ in times of crisis: A discursive institutionalist analysis of the European Central Bank and the European Commission. West European Politics 39(5): 1032–1052.

95.

Schmidt

Müller

Ramos-Vielba

, et al. (2018) Austerity and public sector trade union power: Before and after the crisis. European Journal of Industrial Relations 25: 129–145.

96.

Schneider

Sandbeck

(2018) Monetary integration in the Eurozone and the rise of transnational authoritarian statism. Competition & Change 23(1): 138–164.

97.

Schulten

Müller

(2015) European economic governance and its intervention in national wage development and collective bargaining. In: Lehndorff

(ed.) Divisive Integration: The Triumph of Failed Ideas in Europe – Revisited. Brüssel: etui, pp. 331–363.

98.

Sterdyniak

(2015) À Propos De La Loi Macron. Paris: OFCE.

99.

Stockhammer

(2014) Entstehung und Krise des finanz-dominierten Akkumulationsregimes. In: Heires

Nölke

(eds) Politische Ökonomie der Finanzialisierung. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, pp. 33–48.

100.

Stockhammer

Köhler

(2015) Linking a post-Keynesian approach to critical political economy: Debt-driven growth, export-driven growth and the crisis in Europe. In: Jäger

Springler

(eds) Asymmetric Crisis in Europe and Possible Futures. London: Routledge, pp. 34–49.

101.

Stockhammer

Onaran

(2012) Rethinking wage policy in the face of the Euro crisis. Implications of the wage-led demand regime. International Review of Applied Economics 26(2): 191–203.

102.

Streeck

(2013) Nach der Krise in die Krise: Aussichten auf die Innenpolitik des europäischen Binnenmarktstaats. Leviathan 41(2): 324–342.

103.

Sum

Jessop

(2014) Towards a Cultural Political Economy: Putting Culture in Its Place in Political Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

104.

Syrovatka

(2016) Die Reformpolitik Frankreichs in der Krise. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

105.

Syrovatka

(2018) Arbeitsmarktregulierung unter Beschuss: Die neue europäische Arbeitsmarktpolitik am Beispiel der Reformpolitik Frankreichs unter Francois Hollande. Industrielle Beziehungen 25(1): 82–104.

106.

Syrovatka

Schneider

Sablowski

(2018) Ten Years of Crisis. European Economic Integration Between Silent Revolution and Breakup. Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

107.

Theodoropoulou

(2016) National social and labour market policy reforms in the shadow of EU Bailout conditionality: The cases of Greece and Portugal. In: La Porte

C de

Heins

(eds) The Sovereign Debt Crisis, the EU and Welfare State Reform. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 95–130.

108.

Theodoropoulou

(2018) Drifting into Labour Market Insecurity? Labour Market Reforms in Europe after 2010. Brussels: etui.

109.

Van Apeldoorn

(2002) Transnational Capitalism and the Struggle Over European Integration. London: Routledge.

110.

Van Apeldoorn

(2009) The contradictions of ‘Embedded Neoliberalism’ and Europe’s multi-level legitimacy crisis: The European project and its limits. In: van Apeldoorn

Drahokoupil

Horn

(eds) Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 21–43.

111.

Van Gyes

Schulten

(eds) (2015) Wage Bargaining Under the New European Economic Governance: Alternative Strategies for Inclusive Growth. Brussels: etui.

112.

Wigger

(2018) The new EU industrial policy: Authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives. Globalizations 2014(2): 1–17.

113.

Woll

(2011) Le lobbying à rebours: L’influence du politique sur la stratégie des grandes entreprises. Paris: Presses de Science Po.

114.

Ziltener

(1999) Strukturwandel der europäischen Integration: Die Europäische Union und die Veränderung von Staatlichkeit. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.