ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

conditionality is still driven only by economic considerations.
My contribution assesses financial assistance
conditionality from a human rights perspective. Firstly,
I address the relative responsibility of domestic actors
and European institutions under the Charter of
Fundamental Rights (CFR). To what extent are the major
European actors bound by the social rights of the
CFR when preparing macroeconomic adjustment programmes?
As a second step, I identify the specific provisions
of the Charter affected and provide examples
of financial assistance conditions that infringe these
rights. Thirdly, following the approach of the ECSR
concerning pension schemes in Greece, I suggest
that austerity measures are assessed as a package,
since the accumulation of restrictions is a qualitative
new element regarding the scrutiny under the CFR.
Antonia Baraggia: Conditionality through the
lens of the CJEU: a blurry view
Conditionality has become sort of leitmotiv of the
different instruments adopted by Member States, the
European Commission and the IMF to face the debt
crisis and to safeguard the financial stability of the euro
area. However, the legitimacy and legality of such measures,
and of the procedures through which they have
been adopted, are highly contested. The paper focuses
on the CJEU response to conditionality. In particular,
CJEU case law will be divided into two categories: case
law regarding the legality of the assistance mechanisms
(European Stability Mechanism and Outright Monetary
Transactions) and jurisprudence concerning the compatibility
of national measures taken under the conditionality
of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This overview
highlights the court’s ambiguous attitude: on the one
hand it consider conditionality as a necessary element
for the legitimacy of assistance mechanisms and on the
other hand it avoided to judge the compatibility of the
bailout measures with the Charter of fundamental rights.
Viorica Vita: The rise of spending conditionality
in the EU
During the very recent years, the EU spending architecture
has witnessed a constant rise in conditionality
arrangements. There is a rise in the tools’ quantity,
typology, substantive reach, complexity and, most importantly,
functional use. Despite its widely varying applications
spending conditionality is defined by a well
individualised trait: the policy coercion function. The
present paper intends to stir debate on this curious
phenomenon in EU law, which poses many complex
avenues for legal scholarly research. In doing so, the
paper shall firstly briefly conceptualise the notion of
conditionality and further engage in a comprehensive
mapping exercise of current spending conditionality
reach as compared to prior conditionality arrangements.
Onwards, the paper shall qualitatively explain the various
types of ‘rise’ the tool experienced and finally try to
put forwards some of the most pressing issues posed
by the spending conditionality appraisal.
Carlino Antpöhler: Legitimate Transnational
Intervention into National Redistribution?
Judicial Means to Enhance the Democratic
Legitimacy of Financial Conditionalities
The troika has sparked the fierce controversies in
post-crisis Europe. It has allegedly caused despair by
implementing financial conditionality. Enhancing the
democratic legitimacy of financial conditionalities is
a central challenge for supranational democracy. Yet,
legal scholarship has limited its analysis to fundamental
rights. The democratic principle offers a meaningful
complement to assess the conditionalities’ legitimacy.
The institutions argue that the measures lie outside the
ambit of EU law. My paper shows that it is not convincing
to argue that the crisis measures are autonomous
national decisions. Instead the European democratic
principle of Articles 9-12 TEU can be used to assess the
conditionality procedures. It can enhance the procedures
of conditionalities in three ways. First, the troika’s
decision making process violates the democratic principle’s
core. Second, the mandate of the ECB ought to
be interpreted in line with the democratic principle. The
ECB has crossed the limits of its monetary policy mandate
when participating in the troika. Third, the crisis
measures’ legitimacy would enhance if the European
Parliament was involved.
Alicia Hinarejos: The changing nature of EMU
and its effects on social policy
The euro area crisis has had vast effects on all
members of the euro area and of the EU, and it has
changed the constitutional underpinnings of the European
Union’s Economic and Monetary Union. But the
effects of the crisis and its aftermath are not limited
to EMU; rather, they extend directly or indirectly to all
areas of EU activity and to the project of European
integration itself. This paper will focus on some of the
effects that the crisis has had on social policy.
More specifically, the paper will show that the way in
which fiscal and economic integration is pursued has
changed since the crisis, and that these changes result
in a higher degree of interference with national social
policy choices, leading to a resurgence of the so-called
social deficit. While attempts have been made to tackle
this deficit, the paper will argue that such attempts are
so far insufficient, and that ensuring a satisfactory fit
between economic and fiscal integration and social
policy remains one of the greatest challenges that the
EU faces. Ensuring such correct fit is essential to make
EMU sustainable, as well as to ensure the legitimacy of,
and support for, the European project itself.
Concurring panels 37