Abstract
In 2010 the EU launched the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy with the aim of creating ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive’ growth. The new strategy includes five headline targets, including raising the employment rate to 75 per cent and lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and exclusion. This book provides an academic contribution to Europe 2020. Its main focus is on EU coordination and cooperation in the social field. In that regard it provides a critical assessment of the accomplishments and shortcomings of the previous ‘Lisbon Strategy’, and seeks to identify future possibilities for social policy coordination in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. The book is written for policy-makers, researchers and other stakeholders who are concerned with ‘building a more Social Europe’.
In his chapter Maurizio Ferrera discusses the institutional clash between the logic of closure that is constitutive of national-based social policy and the logic of opening that underpins the process of European integration. To reconcile these different logics, he proposes a new ‘nesting’ of the national welfare state within the overall institutional architecture of the EU, leading to new forms of post-national sharing spaces. Roger Little, Patrick Diamond, Simon Latham and Tom Brodie assess the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. They identify a number of interlocking social crises, including rising unemployment, a growing gap between ‘winners and losers’, the demographic development, and migration and integration. These ‘aftershocks’, however, do not only originate in the financial crisis but also in broader structural change in Western societies. To respond to these challenges at the level of the EU they propose ‘a new policy paradigm based on a combination of social investment and regulatory intervention’. This should include a greater portability of social rights, a strengthening of the Posted Workers Directive, new tax initiatives, the development of a low carbon transition plan, a more efficient use of the EU Structural Funds and a greater focus on key social policy targets.
Many of the following chapters deal with the main EU governance architecture for social policy, the Open Method for Coordination (OMC). While its shortcomings are mentioned, most authors offer a cautiously optimistic assessment of the method. In Bart Varnhercke’s view the Social OMC has become a ‘“template” for soft governance’ not only at the level of the EU but also at national level for the coordination of social policies. However, there is a need for more binding social policy targets. Moreover, it is essential to go beyond the issues of poverty and social exclusion and put a greater focus on the other strands of the Social OMC, pensions, healthcare and long-term care. According to Mary Daly the Lisbon process has put issues such as poverty and social exclusion on the political agenda of the EU. At the same time she identifies several competing visions of what is meant by these concepts: one that primarily focuses on low-wage labour and income support, and another one that primarily focuses on labour market exclusion and activation policy. Hence there is a need for more analytical clarity in relation to social policy initiatives at the level of the EU.
While Hugh Frazer and Eric Marlier agree on the rather positive assessment of the Social OMC, they also identify several weaknesses. Most notably, the ‘hard’ targets of the Lisbon process, in particular a decisive reduction in the at-risk-of-poverty rate, have not been achieved. Further, the ‘soft’ governance approach of the OMC, often regarded as one of its strengths, also represents its weak side as there have been no sanctions against member states who have failed to achieve the social policy targets. Moreover, many member states have used the OMC ‘as a reporting device rather than one of policy development’. Nevertheless, according to Jonathan Zeitlin the method should be regarded a ‘qualified success’ as it has made an impact by introducing concepts such activation, lifelong learning, and social inclusion into national debates. There is even some evidence that the process has affected some social policy changes at the national level in areas such as tax-benefits reforms, childcare and pension reform.
All in all, the authors make a convincing case for strengthening the social dimension at EU level, not as an add-on to the single market and ‘competiveness’ but as a central pillar of the new ‘Europe 2020’ strategy. Having said this, the book should not be seen as a substitute for a comprehensive academic analysis of the Europeanisation of social policy that still is to be written. Nevertheless, the book represents a timely contribution to the debate about the future of ‘Social Europe’ at a time of huge political and financial upheavals.