Changes in Political Discourse from the Lisbon Strategy to Europe 2020: Tracing the Fate of ‘Social Policy’

Abstract

The aim of this new ETUI Working paper is to identify the changes and enduring features of EU political/policy discourse and to seek to explain them by tentatively relating them to factors regarded as their determinants. In the first section, a theory of EU discourse is presented, in the context of its relationships to law and the funding of policies. Subsequently essential elements of official discourse as manifested both before and after the crisis are identified and it is explained how changes can be interpreted after the introduction of a new ‘governance system’. While hard facts remain to be checked out in the future, some significant turnings are nevertheless already apparent and clearly identifiable.