EAPN’s analysis of the 2025 Spring Package highlighted the growing prominence of competitiveness and defence objectives within the European Semester, often at the expense of social priorities and the just transition. The 2026 Spring Package goes a step further, increasingly positioning the Semester as a vehicle for implementing the Commission’s competitiveness and deregulation agenda.
In this analysis, we will see that the CSRs encourage Members States to pursue regulatory simplification, reductions in administrative burdens and investment-friendly reforms, while social policies are predominantly framed in terms of their contribution to labour market participation, productivity and economic growth. This raises fundamental questions about the coherence between the EU’s commitments to poverty eradication and social rights and the governance mechanisms shaping its economic priorities.This report therefore examines the following research question:
How does the 2026 European Semester Spring Package reflect and operationalise the European Commission’s competitiveness and deregulation agenda, and what are the implications for achieving the EU’s objective of eradicating poverty by 2050?
EAPN
The European Anti-Poverty Network
