Building a large and durable consensus for mutual assistance policies in the EU is challenging. Even in times of crisis, member states express different preferences, and policies must reckon with democratic politics. This column presents evidence from a randomised survey to assess support for...

Based on a conjoint survey experiment we explore the support among European citizens for a European Union (EU) budgetary assistance instrument to combat adverse temporary or permanent economic shocks hitting Member States. Suitably designed, there is quite substantial support for such an EU...

Subnational governments have become more involved in the ‘regulation of unemployment’ (the design, implementation and financing of unemployment-related benefits and activation), partly because they are thought to be better placed to activate the unemployed than federal governments. However,...

In this paper we confront the role the EU traditionally plays in the domain of health with the urgent need for collective action triggered by the corona virus pandemic. In the face of such a crisis, we argue that the joint procurement, stockpiling and allocation of medical countermeasures is a...

Can the need for incentives justify inequality? Starting from this question, Frank Vandenbroucke examines a conception of justice in which both equality and responsibility are involved. In the first part of the inquiry, which explores the implementation of that conception of justice, the...

The model developed in this paper admits a systematic discussion of the normative rationale behind the use of two distributive instruments: negative income taxation, creating an unconditional basic income, on the one hand and wage subsidies on the other hand. The model integrates two opposite...

Should the EU be involved in the governance of minimum income protection, and if it should, in which role precisely? This question raises a complex policy conundrum. We focus on a proposal by the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) for an EU Framework Directive on Minimum Income Protection, in...

social Europe, European solidarity, open coordination, social investment