Researching social Europe on the move

Porte, Caroline de la; Madama, Ilaria

doi:10.4337/9781802201710.00017

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Traditionally, EU‐level action in the social policy field has mainly consisted in social regulation instead of the core activities of social policy (i.e., social insurance, public assistance, health and welfare services and housing policy) (De la Porte & Madama, 2022; Majone, 1993). There are a variety of reasons for the narrow focus of EU social policymaking on regulation.…”

Section: From Regulation To Redistributive Capacitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Traditionally, the EU has intervened in the social and labour market policy fields mainly through regulation (Obinger et al, 2005). Since the Treaty of Rome (1957) and up to the 2000s, European initiatives in the social sphere did not imply ‘capacity‐building’ (Genschel & Jachtenfuchs, 2016) at the EU level; instead, they were focused on the coordination of national social security regimes and on regulatory measures in specific policy areas, such as health and safety at work or gender equality (De la Porte & Madama, 2022). With the partial exception of the European Social Fund, which was originally established by the Treaty of Rome to finance vocational training programmes in the Member States, overall, welfare states' core redistributive function remained national.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Buffering national welfare states in hard times: The politics of EU capacity‐building in the social policy domain

Miró,

Kyriazi,

Natili

et al. 2023

Soc Policy Adm

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The EU has traditionally influenced the social and employment policies of Member States through regulation, leaving redistribution to national welfare states. The latter have, however, been gradually weakened by global socioeconomic change and by the expansion of EU market integration. A series of crises over the last 15 years made a bad situation worse: the longue durée erosion of the capacity of European welfare states has morphed into acute social aftershocks, especially in peripheral countries. After the austerity reflex in the early 2010s, the EU introduced new policy instruments with market‐correcting rationales that go beyond the regulatory approach. This article revisits the creation and functioning of four of these instruments that represent EU‐level capacity‐building in the social policy domain: the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, the Youth Guarantee, the Just Transition Fund and SURE (the temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency). We argue that the EU increasingly provides ‘buffer mechanisms’ to support stressed national welfare states in tasks they would otherwise be unable to accomplish, and we identify the political factors that drive the expansion of this ‘buffering’ logic in EU social policy.

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Section: From Regulation To Redistributive Capacitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Buffering national welfare states in hard times: The politics of EU capacity‐building in the social policy domain

Miró,

Kyriazi,

Natili

et al. 2023

Soc Policy Adm

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With hindsight, the policy advancements that occurred in the years that followed, and the continuous references by EU institutions to the EPSR as a source of guidance, led scholars to interpret with more confidence the adoption of the Pillar as a turning point for Social Europe (De la Porte and Madama 2022; Huguenot‐Noël and Corti 2023; Keune and Pochet 2023). These developments spanned across the areas of social protection and strengthening of working rights and included the adoption, in sequence, of the Posting of Workers Directive (Dir.…”

Section: Social Europe Between 2017 and 2021: A New Period Of Expansion?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Latest developments in Social Europe: Promising steps in need for future monitoring

Carella

2023

J of Common Market Studies

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After 2 years of dealing with the social consequences of the pandemic, European citizens and policy-makers entered 2022 with glimpses of hope regarding the prospects for economic, labour market and social recovery. Despite cross-country and within-country variation, the real output in the European Union (EU) had returned to its 2019 level by 2021. By spring of the same year, the average EU unemployment rate had reached January 2019 levels. Then, less than 2 months into the New Year, the Russian invasion of Ukraine brought war on the EU borders, altering previous patterns of recovery and established policy agendas. At the social level, the most relevant implication experienced by European citizens was the deepening of the inflationary trends that had started manifesting in 2021, which turned into a cost-of-living crisis over the course of 2022. While the actual impact of this further shock will be assessed fully in the coming years, the insecurity and precariousness that characterized the most vulnerable social groups revealed once again the existing gaps within welfare states and social protection systems from the local level to the supranational level.Similarly to what happened after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the responses by national policy-makers were swift and largely in the form of compensatory measures. The EU contributed to the financial effort by allowing member states to redirect recovery funds to finance emergency social protection schemes at the national level through the Temporary Crisis Framework enacted in March 2022. The other two main axes of intervention by EU institutions involved the European Central Bank's maneuvers to mitigate inflation, by starting to raise interest rates in July 2022 for the first time since 2011, and the granting of temporary protection to people fleeing Ukraine. The latter was among the first decisions undertaken at the EU level in response to the war, which gave refugees access to key rights, including entitlement to welfare benefits.Concurrently to the immediate reactions to the war and cost-of-living crisis, the EU social policy agenda maintained the path of expansion and strengthening initiated in the previous years. Significant policy milestones were reached in 2022, whose potential benefits resonated even more in the midst of an inflationary context, as it was the case, notably, of the Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages. However, the recent social policy developments need to be analysed as part of a broader process of re-orientation of the European social dimension, undoubtedly characterized in recent years by significant new impetus. While the latest advancements have been encouraging, the full extent of this new period of expansion will need to be monitored closely and evaluated over the coming years. The article proceeds as follows. The first section illustrates the main aspects of the social consequences of inflation during 2022. The second section analyses the evolution

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Researching social Europe on the move

Cited by 2 publications

References 49 publications

Buffering national welfare states in hard times: The politics of EU capacity‐building in the social policy domain

Buffering national welfare states in hard times: The politics of EU capacity‐building in the social policy domain

Latest developments in Social Europe: Promising steps in need for future monitoring

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