“…The credit crunch, turned into a sovereign debt crisis in SE, has intensified the challenges and tensions faced by the SE welfare states and brought to the fore questions such as: Has the crisis ushered in a period of draconian social retrenchment? Does this indicate a significant erosion of social and labour rights, as social policies in the broad sense have become the main variables of adjustment -through internal devaluation -in the European Union (EU) (Degryse, Jepsen & Pochet 2013)? Or is there, instead, a window of opportunity for recasting social policy along the lines of a 'social investment' welfare state (Hemerijck 2012)? Equally relevant is Pierson's argument about tactics of policy 'drift' (e.g.…”