Having studied the key players in the Greek crisis management and the changes this brought about within the Commission, I am now interested in how the EUintervenes in Member States’ reforms through the SG REFORM mechanisms. One particular area of public policy that I am focusing on is the reform of central government administrations.
In the EU, this highly symbolic area, linked to the Member States’ political histories, is governed by the principle of autonomy. Therefore, it is considered neither possible nor desirable whether in terms of interministerial coordination, civil service career management, the recruitment of high-ranking civil servants, and so on.
However, this sector has become more Europeanised in recent years. This has been the case in Greece, in a vertical manner. Conditionality was strict, in the sense that the reforms to be carried out in exchange for financial aid were very detailed and non-negotiable. Today, while technical assistance concerns all Member States, it takes different forms, particularly more flexible ones: it may involve recommendations, exchanges of ‘good practices’ within the framework of broader and more flexible conditions negotiated between the Commission and the Member States. This is what some people call coordinative conditionality, particularly in the case of post-Covid recovery plans. Despite their different forms, these interventions have given rise to a whole sphere of expertise to support them, ranging from the formulation of public policy measures to their implementation.
In my new project, I am returning to political sociology to first map out the actors within this world of expertise. Consultants, development agencies, national civil servants, European civil servants, international organisations and academics are involved to varying degrees in assisting with administrative reforms. The question is: to what extent.
For example, do large consulting firms have a stranglehold on the market? Or is the market dominated by certain states, which intervene in other Member States through their civil servants and development agencies? To answer these questions, I am currently using European financial transparency data to identify the actors that have won technical assistance contracts since 2016.
In the second part of the project, I will continue the investigation by focusing on a particular type of actor: national development agencies. Being based in Paris, I will focus on France to identify the reasons, types and stages of Expertise France’s investment in the European field. As well as the financial aspect, there are also political and symbolic issues at stake. Winning contracts in this field means promoting oneself as a ‘model’ of public action abroad and nurturing transnational networks of expertise.