This study explores decentralisation in EU Member States to better understand how it functions and which processes support it. In particular, it examines to what extent decentralisation is promoted or influenced by the European Semester. The analysis investigates how recent European Semester recommendations and National Reform Programmes (NRPs) address decentralisation, including references and concrete examples.

The study first provides an overview of the level of decentralisation reached across Europe. It then presents four case studies offering national and regional perspectives on the challenges and implementation processes related to decentralisation. Two case studies focus on national contexts (France and Romania) while two others explore regional experiences, namely Gothenburg in Sweden and the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Italy. The study also analyses European Semester documents to assess how they can support and how they supported effective governance and policy implementation through decentralisation.

t33 contributes to the study with in-depth work on two case studies: Romania and the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The study is avaialable here