Macroeconomic and social policies in the EU 15: the last two decades

This draft of our contribution to “The politics and economics of change in European social models” book project, is focused on the relation between macroeconomic policies and social models in the EU 15 during the last two decades. It first describes the shift towards the Maastricht “culture of discipline”, i.e. the effect of the implementation of rules governing macroeconomic policies management for euro area countries, assesses its consequence in terms of economic performance and evaluates how those rules are playing out so far in the current crisis. We then attempt at detailing the second shift towards “structural reforms” of social models to show how it has resulted in a weakening of “automatic stabilizers” that, therefore, can’t fully play their role in the current crisis. Finally, we offer some analytical insights to make sense of those two shifts.