The European Commission has reported on the 2024 European Semester Spring Package, providing guidance on policy coordination. This includes implementation of NextGenerationEU and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), as well as Cohesion Policy programmes. The European Semester cycle also provides updated reporting on progress towards the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals and identifies investment priorities for the upcoming mid-term review of the EU’s Cohesion Policies. The country reports identify key challenges, with a particular focus on competitiveness, and priority reforms and investments. Additionally, the Commission proposes country-specific recommendations (CSRs) to provide guidance to Member States on how to tackle key challenges that are only partially or not addressed in Member States' RRPs.
The country-specific recommendations are divided into:
• A recommendation on fiscal policy, including fiscal-structural reforms, where relevant
• A recommendation to continue or accelerate implementation of the national recovery and resilience plans and Cohesion Policy programmes
• Where relevant, further recommendations on outstanding and/or newly emerging structural challenges, with a focus on improving competitiveness.
In this Semester cycle, the Commission has carried out for the first time a two-stage analysis of employment, skills and social challenges in each Member State, based on the revised Social Scoreboard and the principles of a Social Convergence Framework. All documents relating to the Semester are available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_3290