The New Economic Governance (NEG) is the central framework of the European Union (EU) to monitor and steer Member States’ public finances. Adopted following the Eurozone crisis, it is the core critical scrutiny in Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency. The book makes a novel and comprehensive contribution to a central social policy debate, which is the consequences and effectiveness of welfare conditionalities in a multilevel governance system (Becker, 2024; Curchin, 2019; Larsen & Caswel, 2022). The novelty lies in tracing how NEG affects labour and social goals as part of the third period of EU social policy development (Crespy, 2022; De La Porte, 2021). It offers a more sceptical reading than account emphasising ‘socialisation’ of NEG (Vesan et al., 2021; Zeitlin & Vanhercke, 2018). To support this argument, the authors claim that the NEG has generated a new method of European integration, evolving beyond Scharpf (2010)’s negative and positive integration to a horizontal (market) and vertical (political) format that is more prescriptive, less democratic, and has substantive implications for national policymaking.

To substantiate these claims, the authors focus on employment relations and public services, and on the role of trade unions at the transnational level. This is intended as a counterpoint to what they see as a governance approach within NEG analogous to transnational corporations. The study of the European integration process through the conditionality lens, the authors show how ostensibly non-binding European welfare policy coordination is embedded in binding fiscal and macroeconomic policies introduced after the Eurozone crisis. This is clear from the outset: as a result of the crisis, ‘[t]hese programmes made EU bailout funding conditional on the implementation of strict policy prescriptions, including in policy fields hitherto believed to be shielded from top-down EU interventions’ (Erne et al., 2024, p. 28). The argument is well grounded in empirical evidence on welfare conditionality (Barcevičius, 2014; Becker, 2024; Curchin, 2019; Larsen & Caswel, 2022), while acknowledging differences stemming from competing assumptions. The discussion is later complemented by the social investment agenda as a putative social innovation to reframe EU social policymaking after NEG (Ayob et al., 2016; Jenson, 2017; Pulkka & Simanainen, 2022).

Thus, the book advances core debates within social policy, through the lens of welfare conditionality, in three ways. First, it shows how conditionality operates in a multilevel governance setting, with social policy prescriptions transmitted via fiscal and macroeconomic instruments. Second, it speaks to long-running questions about effectiveness and legitimacy, as to whether conditionality produces intended labour market and public services outcomes or generates stratifying and exclusionary effects. This is done by tracing cross-sectoral evidence in employment relations, transport, water, and healthcare. Third, it links conditionality to institutional accountability, clarifying how executive actors, interest intermediation, and administrative instruments shape social rights and obligations across levels. In doing so, it complements national-level welfare conditionality research by identifying EU-specific mechanisms of policy transmission and constraint (Bailey, 2008; Larsen & Caswel, 2022; Watts-Cobbe & Fitzpatrick, 2025).

The book’s four-part structure helps readers navigate a complex topic, using concrete cases throughout. Part I sets out the analytical framework, building on prior scholarship while adding novel insights on labour politics and public service policy across three sectors. Early on, the authors state: ‘[i]nstead of the financial sanctions of the suspended SGP, EU executives use the policy conditionalities attached to [Recovery and Resilient Facility] funding to reach their objectives’ (Erne et al., 2024, p. 9). The assessment combines ideological, technical, and contextual factors that underpin NEG outputs (Branco & Cardoso, 2022; Popic & Burlacu, 2024). Part II situates the discussion within the ‘democratic deficit’ debate (Hall, 2020; Kelemen, 2013; Rodrik, 2011), using interest groups as the link between national politics and EU policymaking. Drawing an analogy with transnational corporations’ governance methods and the prescriptive nature of conditionality outputs, the authors show how employment relations reforms produced poor outcomes for workers via a neoliberal agenda, and how similar principles shaped EU-level recommendations on the organisation and management of public services.

Part III critiques the use of the social investment to defend welfare conditionality’s benefits, engaging with eco-social policy debates (Fischer & Giuliani, 2025; Jenson, 2017; Koch & Fritz, 2014). Through the transport, water, and healthcare sectors, the authors classify commodifying and decommodifying orientations. While the Esping-Andersen (1990) commodification lens offers critical insight, it doesn’t fully intersect with debates on positive social outcomes the 2017 European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) (Vesan et al., 2021). The authors are sceptical about the scope of the post-EPSR legislative initiatives: ‘[t]hese interventions followed the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights mentioned above, which aimed to reaffirm the EU’s existing social principles and values. Accordingly, these acts did not seek to enlarge the scope of workers’ rights at EU level’ (Erne et al., 2024, p. 128). Their findings suggest enacted policies continued to prioritise privatisation, corporate restructuring, productivity, and efficiency. Part IV synthetises the findings, offering a comparative analysis to explain the continued implementation of the NEG and reflecting on the implications of Covid-19 for its future reform.

A key strength of the book is the combination of multiple policy arenas and sectors with a novel framing of EU economic governance’s policymaking environment. This yields a substantial contribution to debates about how NEG conditionalities shape national public policies, supported by cross-national evidence. By focusing on employment relations, healthcare, and transport, the authors show that a general preference for welfare conditionality is embedded across NEG mechanisms rather than confined to particular sectors. These insights intersect with debates about cohesion policy and its effects on Member States’ policy space (Popic & Burlacu, 2024; Sacher, 2019). The analysis also broadens the political lens beyond a narrow ‘focus on political executives, namely, the Council and the Commission, [that] often neglects questions about democratic accountability’ (Erne et al., 2024, p. 21).

The book also exposes the challenges of conceptualising EU and national governance architectures. For example, it appears to attribute executive functions equally to the European Commission and the Council of the EU, and at times blurs distinctions between EU institutions and the European social actors. This reflects familiar trade-offs when analysing a complex governance architecture and how evolving political dynamics may have altered the way NEG has promoted new forms of European integration. Sometimes, the discussions seem to conflate social investment with social retrenchment, e.g. ‘quantitative aspects of NEG, whether in terms of social investment or austerity measures, made it difficult for them to capture the relevance of the structural changes stipulated by EU executives’ NEG prescriptions (…)’ (Erne et al., 2024, p. 355). This assessment risks downplaying relevant distinctions within social policy literature (Jenson, 2017). The analogy to transnational corporations and the relatively less importance given to state-centred solutions in a multilevel structure may also understate the democratic legitimacy of EU institutions. This was a point raised by Crespy et al. (2024) in relation to the political evolution of NEG toward both economic and social goals. Nevertheless, the book carefully balances analysis of trade unions’ roles in EU decision-making with attention to how policy conditionalities shape national policymaking.

In sum, the book offers a timely contribution to social policy by extending the study of policy conditionality into a multilevel EU setting. It links positive accounts of NEG’s socialisation with critical analyses of macroeconomic conditionality and cross-arena interactions (e.g. cohesion policy). The empirical depth underpins robust insights, through the theoretical lens would be strengthened by differentiation more sharply between EU institutions’ agency and internal actor variation. The evidence convincingly traces NEG’s evolution and effects on national public policy while cautioning against direct structural inferences across all policymaking processes, including in the revised NEG adopted in April 2024.