Rethinking the Social Dimension of the EU: The Costs of Non-Social Policy

Social justice is fundamental to the values that Europeans hold dear, as was clearly demonstrated in the conclusions of the 2000 Lisbon European Council at which the EU mapped out a way forward for its economic and social model. There are sound reasons for having social policy and for the central place that social protection occupies in European society (Begg/Berghman 2002), but it does not follow that all such policies are well-conceived or implemented. However, some of the attacks on social policy in recent years have focused on core features of the social model — even if they have functioned well, and there have been pressures in many countries to roll back the welfare state. Klaus Busch (1998: 19) highlighted the risks: “the starting advantage for the advocates of this neoliberal project lies in the fact that EMU will be concluded without political union and that the market powers will increasingly take care of the break-down of competitively unfavourable social, wage and taxation standards.”