This article aims at establishing to what extent the renewed EU economic and social policy coordination cycles offer opportunities to uphold and further develop the Union’s social objectives. First, it seeks to examine to what extent the legal frameworks in which macroeconomic and social...

The chapter examines the tensions between welfare states on the one hand and social Europe on the other and colliding principles in their historical setting. In particular, the chapter focuses on Social Services of General Interest (SSGI) as core institutions of the welfare state and the...

In the absence of social security reform, current pension entitlements of an aging population exceed future fiscal capacity. However, structural labor market reforms facilitate the transition to sustainable schemes in which a sizeable part of the current generosity of European welfare states can...

This volume examines the state of Social Europe as it manifests itself when European Union (EU) principles and policies have to be implemented in the member states while the EU legitimacy crisis and Great Recession prevail. The volume explores diverse processes, stages and subjects of...

If the critics are right, the EU social model is dead and that’s the end of it. Those on the right may well be dancing on its grave; those more sympathetic might mourn its passing. My view is more sanguine. I shall argue that the European social model is certainly facing unprecedented...

This chapter aims to analyse and explain Greece’s official response to the European Union’s (EU’s) evolving social policy. Understanding this response entails considering four important factors influencing the overall Greek attitude towards the European integration project: the country’s...

Developing countries, in particular the least developed ones, probably have more to learn from social policies in Europe during the early 20th century than from the elaborate welfare-state arrangements after World War II. In addition to macroeconomic growth and stability, the main ambitions must...

This article addresses the so-called institutional deficit in poststructuralist discourse theory by articulating a recent development of such a theory, the so-called discursive policy analysis as mainly elaborated by David Howarth and Jason Glynos, with neo-Poulantzian state theory, especially...