The revival of Social Europe: is this time different?

Abstract

The idea for this special issue on the future of Social Europe dates back to 2021, when it started to become apparent that we were witnessing a substantial reorientation of European social policy, and, possibly, a new expansive stage of Social Europe. How different things had looked only 10 years earlier, when the EU’s reaction to the financial crisis had been to cut down on social policy and focus on market-making and austerity. The renewed move towards more social EU policies is another phase in the development of Social Europe that has been characterised by periods of great ambition and others of deadlock or even regression (Barbier, 2008; Crespy, 2022; Pochet, 2019). The latter was indeed the case with the ‘new’ economic and social governance during the financial crisis, while now we seem to be in a new construction phase. Analysis of the social dimension of European integration has always had two aspects. One is analysis of the development of the social dimension strictly speaking, namely the articles of the Treaty concerning social policy and employment, the respective social and employment Directives, Recommendations and processes, as well as the social funds. The other concerns the extent to which social objectives have been subordinated to economic objectives. It analyses the impact of economic and monetary integration on the possibility of building a European social model, as well as the constraints that it imposes on the maintenance or strengthening of national welfare states, often articulated around Scharpf’s (1999) idea of a constitutional asymmetry between positive and negative integration. A decade ago, these dimensions were addressed in three special issues of Transfer: one on ‘EU social and employment policy under the Europe 2020 strategy’ (Transfer, 2012/3), a second on ‘Labour markets and social policy after the crisis’ (Transfer, 2014/1), and a third on ‘The economic consequences of the European monetary union: social and democratic’ (Transfer, 2013/1). Because of the historical moment in which these issues were produced – the end of the Barroso years and