The purpose of this article was to identify the characteristics of the development of Ukraine’s social policy in the context of integration into EU standards. The historical method was used to perform analysis of documentary sources in the temporal context and to investigate the genesis of the introduction of social policy and trends towards its further development with Europe. The legal method was also used to investigate Ukrainian and EU legislation and its application in the social field, in order to investigate its gaps, as well as its influence on integration processes. By way of conclusion, it was determined that the processes of European integration and, more precisely, the adaptation of Ukrainian legislation to EU standards in the social field played an important role in the development of the country’s social policy. At the same time, there were differences in terminological approaches to key categories of the legislative systems of Ukraine and the EU, as well as in separate areas of social policy.

From a dialectical hermeneutic methodology that discusses different ideological texts produced in particular political contexts of power, the objective of the article lies in defining a critical line that points out inconsistencies and contradictions before what generically can be defined without much conceptual precision as progressive discourse, that is: a discursive formation that brings together different social movements, civil organizations and political parties --in theory-- of frank counter-hegemonic character. It is concluded that morally the progressive discourse is not by itself bad, good, or neutral, everything will depend, ultimately, on the tastes and preferences of each person built by their cultural biases and, more specifically, in the heat of the processes of political socialization by which they have been conditioned ontologically. Therefore, rather than a critique of the historically existing progressive discourse, a review must be made of the tendentious way in which certain political actors use this discourse to validate their hegemonic interests in their context of action. In addition, in many verifiable respects this discourse can mean the justification of authoritarian practices that contravene the enjoyment and enjoyment of fundamental rights, which does not mean that the authors bet on conservative political and ideological positions.