Social policy in the European Union

¶ … paucity of academic research on EU social policy, describes and assesses the content of this research, particularly core issues that have been neglected in the literature so far, and recommends the hurdles that need to be overcome for scientists to produce more quantitative and reliable research.

To understand the relative paucity and recency of EU social policy in academic research, basic historical knowledge is needed of the content and incremental development of EU social policy itself over time.

The EU's original aims centered on economic market-making activity. Social policy, aimed to direct and guide this activity, emerged from those objectives. Since, as stipulated in the1957 Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (EEC Treaty), welfare was seen to originate from economic growth of a liberalized market rather than from public policy at the European level, social policy was seen to be secondary. Intercessions for a "European Social Fund" and provisions for equal pay were the start of social policy. However, since the EEC was never empowered to act, conflict about its involvement continues, and different schools of thought on EU level social policy persist in accounting for differences in EU social policy. In the beginning, EU social policy focused almost entirely on guaranteeing free movement of workers and improvement of their conditions. From the late 1960s on, policies widened to include improvement in more general working and living conditions. (E.g. The 1972 Paris summit). The years following 1974 saw a barrage of directives including the Single European Act (1986) that introduced qualified majority voting for issues related to worker health and safety; the Maastricht Treaty (19992) with the 12 member states agreeing upon procedural reform; the Amsterdam Treaty (1997) that incorporated employment coordination details; and the Nice Treaty (2001) with minor policy reforms.

Scholarly analysis followed this progression at first with descriptive results. Scharpf's (1988) famous essay was the first to treat the EU and its social polices with an analytical (rather than descriptive) manner. This was followed by Liebfried and Pierson's (1995) book that was the first to provide a broad overview of EU social policy, its development, and its relationship with national policy. Involvement of interest groups in EU social policy making became another topic in academic literature. Schmitter and Streck's (1992) became a famous essay on "EU and corporatism" followed by others on the same subject. The scholarly community almost unanimously agreed that the RU showed meso - rather than macro - corporatism; that its policies did not differentiate from policies operating at national level, but, rather, that it operated in a similar way to national level politics. Simultaneously, its political levels has far less impact than it would have happened were it have adopted a macro rather than a meso-approach.

At the same time, academic analyses also demonstrated the huge strides that EU has made in its social policy -- far more than it original intended or than its original objectives were, and that, by doing so, it has transcended the purely intergovernmental realm both in terms of decision-making procedures in terms of social partner participation. However, the practical significance of these events still remains unclear and under-researched. This may be due to the fact that the EU and its social policies are too recent an issue to have a clear consensus on as yet, and that perspective depends on the specific historical period.

The Europeanization of national social policies proceeds in two directions: 1. Direct effects that ensure from implementation of its social polices; 2. Indirect effects that ensure from non-extant EU measures and from effects of various market-making policies on social issues. Academic research has only dealt in a very peripheral and insufficient manner with both.

As regards direct effects, examples of studies include gender equality; the implementation and effects of the Equal Pay Directive; EU's social provisions on improving driver's safety; a few in-depth studies on domestic Europeanization process in open method of coordination (OMC); and labor law -- which is the crux of EU social policy regulation. Results, in general, reveal the same pattern: implementation of EU social policy is slow, torturous, and incremental.

Research on indirect effects initiating from non-extant EU measures and from market-making policies on social issues has shown that indirect effects created by European economic and monetary affairs in the social sphere are as significant and far-reaching as are direct effects. Debates over EU policy -- both direct and indirect -- have also reflected the economics of the times. In the 1980s, lacking competences and scarce activities in the EU were feared but meanwhile international economic liberalization has made the EU emerge in a better light as potentially offering a solution to the problems of globalization.