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The quiet emancipation of social Europe : EU social and labour market policy from the 1990s to the 2020s
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Florence : European University Institute, 2025
EUI; SPS; PhD Thesis
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SCHREURS, Sven, The quiet emancipation of social Europe : EU social and labour market policy from the 1990s to the 2020s, Florence : European University Institute, 2025, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/92817
Abstract
For decades, scholars and politicians alike have been sceptical about the feasibility (or even desirability) of EU involvement in welfare and labour policy, as the Union has lacked strong competences, become more heterogeneous with successive waves of enlargement and faced disruptive political and economic shocks. Nonetheless, the EU has decidedly expanded its role in this domain in the shadow of the Great Recession and COVID-19, as it has adopted legislation on decent work and family leave, embedded questions of social inclusion and decent employment into its economic governance architecture, and set up novel financial mechanisms to ‘buffer’ national welfare states. This dissertation puts these developments in a longer-term perspective to understand the genesis and evolution of the EU’s social acquis. Building on 130 interviews with policy-makers, a large corpus of policy documentation and secondary sources, the dissertation unpacks the agenda-shaping and decision-making behind EU social and labour market policies from the ‘golden age’ of the 1990s, through enlargement and the sovereign debt crisis, via the post-crisis recovery, to the aftermath of the pandemic. I find that this emancipation of social Europe has been driven by a select network of social democratically aligned politicians, officials, trade unionists and experts that have placed new ideas on the agenda and crafted coalitions to sustain these priorities. At the same time, the pattern of social integration has been contingent on the capacity of national and EU policy-makers to draw lessons – from one another and from the past – about the future of welfare state and labour market arrangements, and to gather consent for these social initiatives in an attempt to reinforce the Union’s legitimacy in times of politicization and dissensus. These factors, I conclude, give notable staying power to the EU’s social agenda, even in a more right-wing environment preoccupied with the quest for ‘competitiveness’.
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Defence date: 10 June 2025
Examining Board: Prof. Anton Hemerijck (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Waltraud Schelkle (European University Institute); Prof. Maurizio Ferrera (Università degli Studi di Milano); Prof. Miriam Hartlapp (Freie Universität Berlin)
Examining Board: Prof. Anton Hemerijck (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Waltraud Schelkle (European University Institute); Prof. Maurizio Ferrera (Università degli Studi di Milano); Prof. Miriam Hartlapp (Freie Universität Berlin)
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Parts of Chapters 1 'Theories of European social integration' and 7 'The resilience of a social agenda?' of the PhD thesis draw upon earlier versions published as articles 'Scharpf revisited : European welfare governance through the lens of actor-centred institutionalism' and 'Workers of all member states unite? : Europeanising the power resources approach via the Minimum Wage Directive' (2024) in the 'Journal of European public policy'.