Round Table. From Lisbon to Porto: taking stock of developments in EU social policy: Why politics matter

Abstract

This article argues that the political landscape at the national level is an important element in the development and failures of European social policy. Our understanding of the European social dimension cannot be limited to the various interests of groups of bureaucrats or the goodwill of the Commission (or some of its members). It must take into account the bigger picture of the evolution of national electorates and the place of social issues in national and European elections, which in turn impacts the political balance in the EU institutions. National politics resound at European and transnational level in different global projects (to name the major ones: neoliberal, neomercantilist, social democrat and now green) (Van Apeldoorn and Horn, 2019. Bulmer and Joseph, 2016). However, this article will not explore how these EU/global transnational hegemonic projects are developing and interacting. This article demonstrates the complex impact, shaped by many factors, of the political left/right balance on developments in EU social policy and integration over the past 20 years. Almost 25 years ago, the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) unwittingly initiated a new stage in European social policy. At the time, attention was focused on the new (social) changes that were being made to the Treaty of Maastricht, which had launched the risky and unstable venture of the single currency without prior political union. This was also the year of political victory for two, albeit very different, parties of the European Left: the French Socialist Party of Lionel Jospin and Tony Blair’s New Labour in the United Kingdom. It marked the beginning of a brief period of domination of centre-left governments in the European political landscape, between 1997 and 2004 (Manow et al., 2004; Pochet, 2019) but without a fully shared vision on how to develop a Social Europe project.