Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Why We Need More Social Europe

Colin Crouch 4th July 2014

Colin Crouch

Colin Crouch

Globalization makes international collaboration more urgent; but it also makes it less likely to happen. Marketization requires social policy, not only to combat the negative effects of markets, but also to support the market with things it cannot provide for itself; but marketization and social policy are usually seen as opposed projects.

For Europeans, confronting these two dilemmas is currently being made even more difficult by the insistence of the British and a few others that the European Union should become little more than a loose trading bloc. This direction of thinking, reinforced by the success of racist and xenophobic parties in the recent European parliamentary elections, has to be contested and reversed. Concretely, this means that we need a European Social Union, coalescing around the social investment welfare state.

Globalization in a world of competing nation states leads to economic power being wielded at a level that is beyond the reach of democracy, and therefore to dominance of our lives by transnational corporations. We should not seek to deal with this problem by reversing globalization, as that leads to protectionism, economic inefficiency and intensified antagonism among states. Strengthening transnational democracy is needed, but this is very hard, as it requires not just formal institutions but popular sentiment that accepts shared interests across national boundaries.

Sadly, the main impact of globalization on public opinion is exactly the opposite: to strengthen mutual hostility among people in different parts of the world and to encourage politicians to excite nationalist ideologies. This is by no means limited to Europe, as recent developments in India, Japan, the Islamic world and elsewhere show. A powerful, totally cynical manipulation of this tension comes when neoliberals ally themselves with the nationalistic cause, speaking on behalf of national sovereignty when their aim is to prevent political action from reaching the international levels where global economic power can be contested. Europe has at least made a start on building the necessary transnational identities through such institutions as the European parliament. The attack on these institutions has to be repulsed as necessary preparation for a renewed European social policy.

The complex relationship between marketization and social policy also has to be balanced at the European level. There is now a danger of a division of labour, whereby the EU deals with market-making and competition policy, while nation states have sole responsibility for social policy. This must be resisted for two reasons. First, achieving an acceptable balance is difficult enough without it becoming a conflict between different levels of subsidiarity. Second, if European institutions become solely responsible for market-making, they become insensitive to any kind of policy knowledge other than textbook economics. We see this already in the destructive effect of competition policy on countries’ abilities to maintain areas of social policy outside the market, and in the assault of the European Court on Nordic collective bargaining.

Frank Vandenbroucke (2014) has recently argued for a European Social Union, by which he does not mean an attempt to produce a single form of welfare state for all EU members, but a means of guiding national welfare states so that they are not used for ‘beggar my neighbour’ competition, but find their own ways to become examples of the ‘social investment welfare state’ (Hemerijck 2012; Morel, Palier and Palme 2012). This points to an important way forward, as it advances a European social policy competence while not attempting the old kind of harmonization.

Something of this kind was embodied in the Open Method of Coordination, but that tended to degenerate into allowing all countries to describe what they were doing without any serious pressure to conform to agreed priorities. The social investment welfare state now needs to be adopted as a priority, with countries being seriously questioned about whether their current social policies are really consistent with that concept.

Such an approach would achieve two, ostensibly opposite but in fact mutually compatible, goals. First, addition of achievement of a social investment welfare state alongside the market-oriented priorities of the competition directorate, the European Court, and the narrow goals of austerity policies for countries in difficulties would protect Europe from the neoliberal hegemony that is threatening to overwhelm it. But second, countries would not be left free to pursue regressive and economically unhelpful social policies as was happening in much of south-west Europe in the years before the Eurocrisis. Development of knowledge within the Commission and other EU institutions of the constructive role that social policy can, and in many countries does, play would have a healthy impact on how the Union develops in the coming years.

It can be contested that none of this will help combat the xenophobia sweeping through Europe. However, it is wrong to interpret the rise of the far right as something that results from European integration; similar movements have become powerful in Norway and Switzerland, outside the EU, as well as in other parts of the world that I have mentioned. The issue is globalization, not Europe. And part of the new xenophobia can be explained as a reaction to Islamic terrorism, which is itself another reaction to globalization. Social policy at any level cannot claim to hold the answer to all these ugly developments of today’s world – though it remains true that a population that has the security of a strong welfare state should be less prey to the fears and uncertainties that give the far right a major part its appeal.

References

Hemerijck. A. (2012), Changing Welfare States, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morel, N. Palier, B. and Palme, J. (2012), Towards a Social Investment Welfare State? Bristol: Policy Press.

Vandenbroucke, F. 2014, ‘The Case for a European Social Union’, European Policy Brief, 23.

Colin Crouch 2
Colin Crouch

Colin Crouch is a professor emeritus of the University of Warwick and external member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. He has published widely on comparative European sociology, industrial relations and contemporary British and European politics.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u421983467f bb39 37d5862ca0d5 0 Ending Britain’s “Brief Encounter” with BrexitStefan Stern
u421983485 2 The Future of American Soft PowerJoseph S. Nye
u4219834676d582029 038f 486a 8c2b fe32db91c9b0 2 Trump Can’t Kill the Boom: Why the US Economy Will Roar Despite HimNouriel Roubini
u42198346fb0de2b847 0 How the Billionaire Boom Is Fueling Inequality—and Threatening DemocracyFernanda Balata and Sebastian Mang
u421983441e313714135 0 Why Europe Needs Its Own AI InfrastructureDiane Coyle

Most Popular Articles

startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer
u421983467 2a24 4c75 9482 03c99ea44770 3 Trump’s Trade War Tears North America Apart – Could Canada and Mexico Turn to Europe?Malcolm Fairbrother
u4219834676e2a479 85e9 435a bf3f 59c90bfe6225 3 Why Good Business Leaders Tune Out the Trump Noise and Stay FocusedStefan Stern
u42198346 4ba7 b898 27a9d72779f7 1 Confronting the Pandemic’s Toxic Political LegacyJan-Werner Müller
u4219834676574c9 df78 4d38 939b 929d7aea0c20 2 The End of Progess? The Dire Consequences of Trump’s ReturnJoseph Stiglitz

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
How are minimum wage levels changing in Europe?

In a new Eurofound Talks podcast episode, host Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound expert Carlos Vacas Soriano about recent changes to minimum wages in Europe and their implications.

Listeners can delve into the intricacies of Europe's minimum wage dynamics and the driving factors behind these shifts. The conversation also highlights the broader effects of minimum wage changes on income inequality and gender equality.

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

KU Leuven advertisement

The Politics of Unpaid Work

This new book published by Oxford University Press presents the findings of the multiannual ERC research project “Researching Precariousness Across the Paid/Unpaid Work Continuum”,
led by Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven), which are very important for the prospects of a more equal Europe.

Unpaid labour is no longer limited to the home or volunteer work. It infiltrates paid jobs, eroding rights and deepening inequality. From freelancers’ extra hours to care workers’ unpaid duties, it sustains precarity and fuels inequity. This book exposes the hidden forces behind unpaid labour and calls for systemic change to confront this pressing issue.

DOWNLOAD HERE FOR FREE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

What kind of impact is artificial intelligence (AI) having, or likely to have, on the way we work and the conditions we work under? Discover the latest issue of HesaMag, the ETUI’s health and safety magazine, which considers this question from many angles.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641