EU ministers have adopted a set of policy recommendations for every member state as part of the European Semester 2026 cycle.
The package covers economic, social, employment, structural and budgetary policies for each country, with the Council of the EU describing them as “country-specific recommendations,” it informed in a release on Friday.
This year’s recommendations put particular emphasis on competitiveness, energy security, economic security, defence readiness and social fairness, according to the Council.
Member states are encouraged to advance priorities linked to competitiveness, rapidly implement cohesion policy funds, and continue reforms and investments supported by the Recovery and Resilience Facility — the EU funding programme set up after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fiscal guidance in the recommendations focuses on countries’ paths towards achieving or maintaining “healthy public finances” and on implementing energy-related measures within the limits of the EU’s economic governance rules.
Macroeconomic imbalance reviews
The Council also approved conclusions on 2026 in-depth reviews under the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure, a process introduced to identify, prevent and address economic imbalances that could harm stability in an individual country, the euro area, or the EU.
The European Semester, introduced in 2011, is the EU’s annual framework for coordinating member states’ economic, fiscal and employment policies.
Draft country-specific recommendations are prepared by the European Commission and then adopted by the Council, which may provide explanations where it does not follow the Commission’s proposals.
