Social Europe, the Road Not Taken

Social Europe, the Road Not Taken
Author: Aurélie Dianara Andry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2022-11-06
Genre: Europe
ISBN: 0192867091

This book examines the European Left's attempt to think and give shape to an alternative type of European integration-a 'social Europe'-during the long 1970s. Based on fresh archival material, it shows that the western European Left-in particular social democratic parties, trade unions, and to a lesser extent 'Eurocommunist' parties-formulated a project to turn 'capitalist Europe' into a 'workers' Europe'. This project favoured coordinated measures for wealth redistribution, market regulation, a democratisation of the economy and of European institutions, upward harmonisation of social and fiscal systems, more inclusive welfare regimes, guaranteed employment, economic and social planning with greater consideration for the environment, increased public spending to meet collective needs, greater control of capital flows and multinational corporations, a reduction in working time, and a fairer international economic order favouring the global south. During the pivotal years following 1968, deeply marked by labour militancy, new social movements, economic crisis, and the unmaking of the 'postwar compromise', a window of opportunity opened in which European integration could have taken different roads. The defeat of 'social Europe' was a result of a decade-long social conflict which ended with the affirmation of a neoliberal Europe. Investigating this forgotten struggle and the reasons of its defeat can be useful not just to scholars and students eager to understand the historical evolution of European integration, the European Left, and European capitalism, but also to anyone interested in building alternative European and global futures.

Social Services of General Interest in the EU

Social Services of General Interest in the EU
Author: Ulla Neergaard
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9067048763

The EU has limited legislative competence in the field of social law. However, the Member States are increasingly modernizing social services and social (welfare) protection, attempting to make social services more efficient by increasingly looking to the market for the provision of such services. This policy move brings social services into the radar of EU law. The EU response to this sensitive issue has resulted in a piecemeal and fragmented approach towards the treatment of a new policy area of Social Services of General Interest (SSGI) in EU law and policy. This book is a first contribution towards charting how SSGI have emerged as a special category of SGI in the EU, the reaction of the Member States and stake-holders and how policy is being made through new governance processes, carve-outs and safe havens in legislation and soft law, especially in the light of the new values of the EU introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon 2009. It takes an inter-disciplinary approach and will be of interest to lawyers, economists and political scientists who are interested in EU policy-making as well as practioners, EU and national policy-makers. Ulla Neergaard is Professor of EU law at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Erika Szyszczak is a Jean Monnet Professor of European Law ad personam, Professor of European Competition and Labour Law at the University of Leicester, Barrister, Littleton Chambers, UK. Johan W. van de Gronden is Professor of European Law at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Markus Krajewski is Professor of Public and International law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

The Road to Social Europe

The Road to Social Europe
Author: Jean-Claude Barbier
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2013
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0415688884

In the wake of the Greek and Irish crises, and at a moment when solidarity between states is hotly debated on a daily basis at EU level, it is important to understand how 'solidarity' can happen at all. The Road to Social Europe reviews the development of political cultural processes since the nineteenth century, showing how social protection and social justice have gradually become interwoven with systems of social protection, or welfare states. Grounded on extensive empirical research conducted in many EU countries and in the European Commission's administration over twenty years, the book provides a cultural analysis of welfare systems in Europe. It also presents an original enquiry into the importance of languages for politics in Europe, for the politics of welfare, and for sociological research. It shows how sociological and ethnographic analysis can help in understanding the current and future challenges of European integration that rely unilaterally on functional economics. This in-depth sociological analysis of European diversity will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of sociology, political science, political economy and European studies.

Research Handbook on the Politics of Constitutional Law

Research Handbook on the Politics of Constitutional Law
Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 777
Release: 2023-11-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1839101644

This Research Handbook deals with the politics of constitutional law around the world, using both comparative and political analysis, delivering global treatment of the politics of constitutional law across issues, regions and legal systems. Offering an innovative, critical approach to an array of key concepts and topics, this book will be a key resource for legal scholars and political science scholars. Students with interests in law and politics, constitutions, legal theory and public policy will also find this a beneficial companion.

The Development of European Competition Policy

The Development of European Competition Policy
Author: Brian Shaev
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2024-06-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351010565

This book considers a central issue of our time: the relationship between the macroeconomic objectives of political parties in democratic countries and the legal framework of market economies. The impressive panel of contributors examines social-democratic policies on cartels, market concentration and competition in different European countries, spanning a hundred-year period (specifically the interwar period, the initial postwar period, the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s and 1990s, and the 2000s). This thought-provoking volume challenges the dominant belief that the EU’s economic system and competition policy were mainly influenced by neoliberal economic thinking, instead showing that Keynesian and social-democratic positions played a major role in the emergence of this system. It will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers interested in modern economic history, industrial organization, political economy, European legal history and political science.

An Ever More Powerful Court?

An Ever More Powerful Court?
Author: Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-10-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191067695

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has become famed - and often shamed - for its political power. In scholarly literature, this supranational court has been regarded as a 'master of integration' for its capacity to strengthen integration, sometimes against the will of member states. In the public debate, the CJEU has been severely criticized for extending EU competences at the expense of the member states. In An Ever More Powerful Court? The Political Constraints of Legal Integration in the European Union, Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen challenges these views with her careful examination of how judicial-legislative interactions determine the scope and limits of European integration in the daily EU decision-making process. Methodologically, the book takes a step forward in the examination of judicial influence, suggesting a 'law attainment' approach as a novel method, combined with a large set of interviews with the current decision-makers of social Europe. Through a study of social policy developments from 1957 to 2014, as well as a critical analysis of three case studies - EU regulation of working time; patients' rights in cross-border healthcare; and EU posting of worker regulations - Martinsen reveals the dynamics behind legal and political integration and the CJEU's ability to foster political change for a European Union social policy.

Europe without Borders

Europe without Borders
Author: Isaac Stanley-Becker
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2025-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691261741

The contested creation of free movement—for people and goods—in the Schengen area of Europe Europe is a place of free movement among nations—or is it? The Schengen area, established in 1985 and today encompassing twenty-nine European countries, allows people, goods, and capital to cross borders without restraint. Schengen transformed European life, advancing both a democratic project of transnational citizenship and a neoliberal project of international free trade. But the right of free movement always excluded non-Europeans, especially migrants of color from former colonies of the Schengen states. In Europe without Borders, Isaac Stanley-Becker explores the contested creation of free movement in Schengen, from treatymaking at European summits and disputes in international courts to the street protests of undocumented immigrants who claimed free movement as a human right. Schengen laid the groundwork for the making of a single market and the founding of the European Union. Yet its emergence is one of the great untold stories of modern European history, one hidden in archives long embargoed. Stanley-Becker is among the first to have access to records of the treatymaking—such as letters between France’s François Mitterrand and West Germany’s Helmut Kohl—and Europe without Borders offers a pathbreaking account of Schengen’s creation. Stanley-Becker argues that Schengen gave a humanist cast to a market paradigm; but even in pairing the border crossing of human beings with the principles of free-market exchange, this vision of free movement was hedged by alarm about foreign migrants. Meanwhile, these migrants—the sans-papiers—saw in the promise of a borderless Europe only a neocolonial enterprise.

Migration, Work and Citizenship in the New Global Order

Migration, Work and Citizenship in the New Global Order
Author: Ronaldo Munck
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135748284

Any consideration of global migration in relation to work and citizenship must necessarily be situated in the context of the Great Recession. A whole historical chapter – that of neoliberalism – has now closed and the future can only be deemed uncertain. Migrant workers were key players during this phase of the global system, supplying cheap and flexible labour inputs when required in the rich countries. Now, with the further sustainability of the neoliberal political and economic world order in question, what will be the role of migration in terms of work patterns and what modalities of political citizenship will develop? While informalization of the relations of production and the precarization of work were once assumed to be the exception, that is no longer the case. As for citizenship this book posits a parallel development of precarious citizenship for migrants, made increasingly vulnerable by the global economic crisis. But we are also in an era of profound social transformation, in the context of which social counter-movements emerge, which may halt the disembedding of the market from social control and its corrosive impact. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

European Food Regulation after Enlargement

European Food Regulation after Enlargement
Author: Karolina Żurek
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2011-11-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9004209018

This book presents a critical legal perspective on the current direction of EU food regulation. Analysing three regulatory mechanisms - mutual recognition, scientific risk regulation and standardisation - in the evolution of food legislation in the EU, the book shows the inadequacy of the current framework in facing the challenges of enlargement. Using the particular experience of a new member state, Poland, the book argues that an enlarged Europe must not disregard diverse socio-economic implications of market regulation. Due to historical legacies and a bias in favour of homogeneity, the EU food regulatory regime has generated a one-dimensional crisis-oriented approach. As a result, it tends to overlook other legitimate concerns such as quality, diversity and local traditions. This book argues that this need not be so.

Struggling for a Social Europe

Struggling for a Social Europe
Author: Mr Andrew Mathers
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2012-12-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1409490858

Protests at summit meetings have inspired intense debate over the nature and significance of the 'anti-globalization' or 'anti-capitalist’ movement. However, the European dimension of this movement is still largely unknown. In this insightful book Andy Mathers addresses this deficit by focusing on events that have marked the birth of a European social movement. He relates the development of the movement to key matters such as economic, employment and welfare state restructuring along neoliberal lines. He also challenges ideas about the nature of contemporary collective action and the character of present day social movements. Mathers discusses the significance of the movement and its future development through a critical engagement with the work of major writers in European sociology and of academics influential in the wider global movement such as Pierre Bourdieu. A postscript brings readers fully up-to-date with developments in the type of 'social Europe' propagated by the institutions of the EU as well as in the maturation of a social movement to oppose it.