From harmonization to co-ordination? EU law in the Lisbon governance architecture

The debate on the nature of law in the Lisbon Strategy has focused on the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC), which has been defined in opposition to the Community Method, suggesting a shift from hard law to soft law. This contribution goes beyond this ‘either–or’ debate by analysing Lisbon as a governance architecture, composed of ideational and organizational components, affecting EU law. Although co-ordination is the central organizational device of this architecture, it has multiple meanings and cannot be reduced to the OMC. In the Lisbon Strategy, soft co-ordination is combined with hard law. The ideational and organizational components of Lisbon also have an effect on both the quantity of regulatory output and on the nature of EU law. Yet, the Lisbon governance architecture has only a very modest effect on the case law.