Enforcing social standards through RRF conditionalities: the European Commission as a social advocate in Latvia and Estonia

The EU is often criticised for its market orientation and the lack of effective social policy,stemming from soft recommendations and limited fiscal instruments. Meanwhile, it remainsunclear whether the Commission’s increased leverage and conditionalities under theRecovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) can drive national social policy reforms. This articleaddresses this question by analysing Estonia and Latvia as two extreme cases of fiscalconservatism and underperforming welfare systems. Theoretically situated betweencoordinative and coercive Europeanization and empirically drawing on 23 interviews withnational and EU officials, policy documents and press sources, the article finds that theCommission effectively used RRF incentives and conditionalities to push for tax-funded socialreforms in line with social CSRs, even against national preferences. It argues that theCommission’s social entrepreneurship, typically studied at the supranational level, can alsoextend to national enforcement. However, the article cautions that hierarchical st