This contribution, using EU institutions' legitimacy‐seeking procedures as an analytical framework, aims to discuss the political traps of EU governance processes taking place in EU bodies in pursuit of a new institutionalisation of the Lisbon strategy.
The approach is in the form of a discursive analysis.
The discursive analysis shows the hegemony of two disciplines and approaches: economy and psychology. These will be shown to be interconnected, as they have together contributed to the depoliticisation of responses to current economic demands and social reforms and to the repoliticisation of individuals (contribution to an identity production policy). This “multi‐level governance process” which characterises the regulation of the EES by EU institutions might be transformed into a project of multi‐level governance without political government.
The paper looks at the process of seeking responses to the labour market crisis within Europe.
