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This chapter presents a map describing the new spatial architecture of social protection in the European Union resulting from free movement and competition rules, and their effects on traditional welfare state boundaries. The destructuring consequences of the new boundary configuration are discussed, with specific reference to pensions systems and the issue of migration. The chapter concludes by highlighting the margins of manoeuvre for a possible “nesting” of nation-based forms of social protection in a wider EU space, capable of promoting adaptation and reform, while upholding at the same time the basic pre-conditions for maintaining adequate levels of social protection.

This chapter discusses the organizational forms central to European administrative governance. It sets out the central features of these forms, their rationale(s) and, wherever possible, offers an assessment of the issues which they raise in terms of legitimacy and accountability. Specifically, it considers comitology, European agencies, various forms of European networks for administrative governance, the Open Method of Coordination, and organizational forms in which private parties play a dominant role.

This chapter focuses on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a method of policy delivery in the European Union. It begins by reviewing the imprimatur given by the European Council to the Open Method of Coordination at the Lisbon and Nice Summits. It then examines the operation of the OMC process in the three key areas of economic policy, employment policy, and social inclusion. Finally, the chapter evaluates the OMC, by looking at how far it fulfils the aspirations that underpin this mode of policy delivery in the EU.

The achievements in European social policy are generally considered weak at best. The European Union’s apparent liberal and supply-side bias lends credence to the idea of a convergence towards the ‘hegemonic American model’. Yet employment policies and social protection policies have been formally included in European competencies under a specific procedure, the ‘Open Method of Coordination’. The unintended consequence of European economic and monetary integration is that different European organizations now compete for competence in the growing EU social field. This leads to considerable innovation in policy orientation and practices.

This chapter focuses on policy learning, one specific aspect of the governance process that contributes to the building of a European Social Model (ESM). It starts from the assumption that if we want to understand what forms of solidarity develop in the EU it is important, first of all, to understand the governance processes through which a social dimension of the EU is established. The chapter traces how the construction of discourses about policy learning within institutional frameworks comes to govern education in the EU. It argues, firstly, that policy learning contributes to EU governance in education through four distinct policy learning styles: mutual, competitive, surface, and imperialistic learning. Secondly, it suggests that policy learning contributes to governance because it is not a separate and discrete strategy but is embedded in already established governance regimes, such as the use of expert knowledge.

This chapter investigates the ways in which European integration is shaping the development of national pension systems in the EU. It begins with a brief discussion of the variable forms of solidarity embedded in national pension systems. It then discusses the three core components of the EU's emerging pensions paradigm: the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) process as applied to pensions, the recently adopted Occupational Pension Fund Directive, and the proposed Directive on pension portability. This includes discussion of some of the consequences of EU pension policy in Germany and the Netherlands. The concluding section discusses the implications of the analysis for the future of social solidarity in the EU.

This chapter turns to non-regulatory means of regulating services, such as the Open Method of Coordination, the powers given to various EU agencies, to national regulatory authorities, and to networks thereof.

This chapter analyses the various instruments that shape and regulate public services in Europe, with a particular focus on those instruments affecting social public services and employment services. It is suggested that public services, and employment services in particular, are placed in the midst of an extremely complex regulatory web composed by both traditional, hard law, instruments and by more reflexive and soft forms of regulation, ranging from policy Guidelines elaborated within the OMC framework, to funding arrangements provided by the European Social Fund. Crucially, this regulatory web is both woven at a supranational level and at a national and, sometimes, sub-national level and is inspired by both social and economic concerns. A visible trend is the growing role played by private and contractual modes of regulation, most obviously in the relationship between public services, private contractors/providers, and individual users.

Since 2000, EU interventions to combat poverty and social exclusion have centred around the emergence of a novel technique of EU governance: the Open Method of Coordination. It is argued that the desire to study ‘the OMC’ and to compare it to other EU governance tools has given policy coordination an overly singular identity. This chapter deconstructs this technique in order to render its identity more ambiguous and more fluid than scholars have often been prepared to admit. It is suggested that different rationales, modes, and philosophies underpin coordination processes with significant implications for the role of the OMC as a medium of either ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ benchmarking. In turn, this has implications for the tolerance of policy autonomy and the pursuit of policy convergence. Moreover, there is a central ambiguity as to whether the objective of policy coordination is governance through influence or a form of ‘dynamic accountability’.

This chapter examines non-justiciable compliance mechanisms. Drawing on regulatory theory, it argues that such mechanisms should move away from a fault-based notion, to focus on the body in the best position to bring about change. Rather than leaving enforcement to the ad hoc initiative of an individual, it aims to stimulate an internalization of the validity of human rights obligations. Sanctions or penalties are utilized only as the fall-back. Also of key importance is the involvement of stakeholders and others. The chapter also considers the risk that positive human rights duties might become severed from their roots as fundamental human rights and merge with policy-making. The chapter then considers possible applications of these theoretical insights, with a focus on the EU's Open Method of Coordination; reporting mechanisms, and human rights commissions. It concludes by constructing a ‘synergistic’ approach in which political, judicial, and non-judicial mechanisms work together to produce positive outcomes.

Chapter 11 examines the viability of several alternative and complementary routes to the adoption of a European contract law instrument contemplated in the debate, which include enhanced cooperation, an intergovernmental treaty under public international law or via an ad hoc convention method, and certain so-called ‘softer’ models comprising the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), certain American techniques (Restatements, uniform and model laws, and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)), and the Common Frame of Reference (CFR). Questions are raised regarding the constitutionality of European contract law and the limits and exercise of Union competence, and a comparative analysis made between the EU and the US.

This chapter talks about the fight against unemployment, which is considered as a primary concern of European social policy. The chapter begins by addressing the argument that welfare state variations should be considered if one wants to reach an understanding of how welfare states are exposed and react to international pressures. It is followed by an analysis of Territorial Employment Pacts (TEPs). Empirical evidence from a case study of a Portuguese TEP is provided as well. The chapter ends with a discussion of the role and impact of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on welfare state reform, specificially the Portuguese welfare state and power relations in Portugal.

This chapter argues that critically engaging with scale can extend understandings of the co-constitution of knowledge and policy, and that this stands to develop further insights into how knowledge hegemonies are sustained in contexts of policymaking. To explore the possible practices of scale embedded in hegemonic regimes of knowledge, the chapter uses the case of Europe’s Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in the area of education policy. Drawing on documents and observation data, the empirical analysis discusses how the OMC privileges benchmarks, peer learning, and best practices as powerful types of knowledge and ‘ways of knowing’ and reveals how these mobilise important scalar narratives. By highlighting the politics of scale featuring in European education governance, the empirical analysis highlights the co-constitutive relationship between knowledge, policy and scale, and argues that scalecraft is a hegemonic regime of practice which is central to building coherent narratives for powerful knowledge in policymaking.

In this chapter we discuss two basic ideas. The first one is that technological change as much as (if not more than) globalization leads to increasing income disparities; accordingly, European unemployment is caused by attempts at fighting these inequalities. The second one is that globalization, and specifically factor mobility, make it difficult for national governments to conduct any redistributive policy, thus leading to what is sometimes called ‘race to the bottom’, or ‘social dumping.’ We show that up to now there are no clear signs of social dumping even though the increasing use of tax heavens and posted workers indicates that the threat is real.