To fight poverty and social exclusion, EU law must buttress basic nuts and bolts of the welfare edifice
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262720974034 |
| Author | Frank Vandenbroucke |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJSS
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2020, Vol. 22(4) 486–492
To fight poverty and social
ª The Author(s) 2020
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exclusion, EU law must
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DOI: 10.1177/1388262720974034
buttress basic nuts and bolts of
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the welfare edifice
Frank Vandenbroucke
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abstract
This article provides a conclusion to the EJSS Special Issue ‘Discussing strategies for Social Europe: The
potential role of EU law in contributing to the Union’s policy objective of fighting poverty and social
exclusion’. The contributions to this Special Issue raise a fundamental question: why did European
governments fail to deliver on their promise, proclaimed with so much emphasis twenty years ago, to
reduce poverty in Europe? It is too easy to say that the one and only problem was the non-binding nature
of the social objectives of Lisbon and the antipoverty targets of Europe 2020. There is a broader challenge
at the EU level, which goes beyond minimum income protection and directly involves crucial nuts and
bolts of the whole welfare edifice: when confronted with severe economic and social shocks, welfare
states need an adequate stabilization capacity. This implies that the European Monetary Union becomes
a true ‘insurance union’. I argue that one should understand the relevance of the European Pillar of Social
Rights from this perspective, and I relate that argument to the contributions to the Special Issue.
Keywords
Social Europe, poverty, social inclusion, European social union, European pillar of social rights
Conclusion to the European social security review special issue
‘Discussing strategies for Social Europe: The potential role of EU law
in contributing to the Union’s policy objective of fighting poverty
and social exclusion’
This EJSS Special Issue on the role of EU law in fighting poverty raises a fundamental question:
why did European governments fail to deliver on their promise, proclaimed with so much emphasis
twenty years ago, to reduce poverty in Europe? Social policy was introduced as a distinct focus of
Corresponding author:
Frank Vandenbroucke, University of Amsterdam, 1012 WX Amsterdam, Netherlands.
E-mail: F.I.G.Vandenbroucke@uva.nl
Vandenbroucke
487
attention for European cooperation at the special European Summit in Lisbon in March 2000. The
Lisbon Council concluded that ‘‘steps must be taken to make a decisive impact on the eradication
of poverty.’’ Expectations ran high. By the end of 2001, common objectives to fight poverty and
social exclusion and social indicators to measure progress were agreed. In 2010, Europe 2020, the
successor strategy to the Lisbon Strategy, introduced concrete targets for the reduction of poverty
and exclusion. Yet, the targets were missed.
Although this story is well known, we may have forgotten about part of the inspiration. Why did
we focus so single-mindedly on poverty in 2000? Many welfare state scholars would emphasize
that fighting poverty is but one dimension of the mission of welfare states. They are right.
However, apart from the idea that a litmus test for social justice is how well a society caters for
its most vulnerable members, in 2000, a broader motivation and a ‘tactical’ consideration were at
play, at least in my mind. The tactical consideration was that a call to fight poverty would have
strong political traction, and inevitably imply a much broader concern with the quality of the
welfare state at-large. We suspected that national political actors would be wary about a compre-
hensive debate on the architecture of their national welfare states as well as all the hardware
applied in it. But, engaging them in a debate on poverty outcomes (which they could not refuse,
so we thought in 2000) would also gradually engage them in a debate on how to generally safe-
guard and modernize Europe’s welfare states. In this way, the focus on poverty would lead,
indirectly, to a comprehensive review of essential nuts and bolts of welfare states. Simultaneously,
the new process of ‘Open Coordination on Social Inclusion’ was considered ambitious, but realis-
tic, because it was at pains to respect the diversity and policy sovereignty of Member States.
Hence, the Open Method of Coordination not only put a strong emphasis on common objectives
and guidance, as opposed to on hard legislation, but also on subsidiarity.
Two decades later, we have to admit that poverty increased. What went wrong? The softness of
EU social governance – ‘cheap talk, no bite’ – is the usual suspect in discussions on the ‘what-
went-wrong’ question. This motivates the search for more effective European policy levers,
notably legal instruments, to support the fight against poverty, and it inspires different contribu-
tions to this EJSS Special Issue. Yet, it is too easy...
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