The Democratic Impacts of EU Macro-Economic Surveillance: Reconfiguring the Eu's Gendered Normative Base

This paper explores how EU integration has progressed after the financial crisis, focusing specifically on the increased role of macro-economic surveillance and the resulting re-location of democratic control over budgetary policy.  Focusing on feminist activists working at the EU level it maps shifts in civil society participation mechanisms to examine 1) how the EUs core economic policies have proved impervious to gendered critique emanating from: the EU parliament; the gender unit in the Commission; and feminist civil society and 2) feminist civil societies efforts mobilise and contest the re-newed dominance of a macro economic model which regards gendered social impacts as irrelevant or necessary.

Premised on this empirical material the paper examines  ‘the crisis’ as a critical juncture enabling a reconfiguration of the EU’s normative priorities where economic standardization takes re-newed prescience over the EU’s flagship normative commitments such as democracy, solidarity and gender equality. In doing so, the paper deepens our understanding of the role this crisis has played in steering EU integration and its normative values.