Keywords: Policy coordination; EU economic governance; Structural reforms; Open method of coordination; Country-specific recommendations.
The European Semester seeks to coordinate national policies to sustain the stability
of the euro and the growth of the euro-area. In reality, European member states only
partially heed the Country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the Council discusses
and the Commission issues. This Forum examines Italy’s record to understand
why this may be the case: the contributions herein contained analyze the political,
administrative and normative determinants of the Italian authorities' degree of
compliance. After describing the articulation of the European Semester and rapidly
reviewing the international literature, this introduction offers an overview of the contributions
of this Forum and of the ways in which they seek to shed light on the peculiarities
and consequences of Italy's participation in this important budgetary open
method of coordination.