Convergence of social protection objectives and policies in Member States is an explicit objective of the EU. Earlier research has shown that there has indeed been a tendency of convergence of social protection levels over the last decades. However, comparative studies frequently use indicators...

The ageing of populations and hampering economic growth increase pressure on public fi-nances in many advanced capitalist societies. Consequently, governments have adopted pen-sion reforms in order to relieve pressure on public finances. These reforms have contributed to a relative shift from...

Convergence of social protection objectives and policies in member states is an explicit objective of the EU. Earlier research has shown that there has indeed been a tendency of convergence of social protection levels over the last decades. However, comparative studies of welfare states...

Previous studies show that reforms in labour market policies differ across countries. This may be partly owing to the impact of European integration on these policy reforms. Whereas most of these studies are qualitative case studies, the present study aims at explaining cross-national variation...

The European Employment Strategy (EES) aims to promote convergence towards higher employment and lower unemployment by soft law instruments. Previous studies in the Europeanization literature on the impact of the EES are mainly focused on active labour market policies. This article explains...

The European Employment Strategy (EES) aims to promote convergence of domestic labour market policies by soft law instruments. Previous studies on the impact of the EES are mainly focused on active labour market policies. The present study aims at explaining cross national variation in national...

The adoption of a new instrument of governance in the EU – the open-method-of-coordination - has renewed the notion of convergence/divergence across EU member states. This paper examines the role of European integration in shaping and changing social welfare systems and investigates whether...

Flexicurity is at the heart of European policy debates. Its aim is to overcome the tensions between labour market flexibility on the one hand, and the provision of social security for workers on the other hand. To date, there is little insight into whether flexicurity policies have been adopted...