EU Social Policy and the Subsidiarity Principle: The End of an Illusion?

Social policy at the EU level remains a notably limited enterprise. The Union appears unable to address social inequalities without treading into politicised areas of national decision-making, since intervention in the social domain touches upon core questions of national identity, sovereignty and democracy. In this article, I explore the fraught relationship between EU social policy and the principle of subsidiarity, which has frequently served to legitimate support for as well as opposition to supranational action in the social domain, even when and where the Union has well-defined competences to legislate. The article engages in a conceptual analysis of the implications of subsidiarity for EU social policy and labour law, illustrated with a case study that examines usages of the principle by different institutional actors in recent debates on EU social directives. While it clearly provides a convenient rhetorical instrument to political actors, I argue, the concept of subsidiarity fails to serve as an organising principle for the multilevel governance of social and labour policy. Scholarly and policy debates on the constitution of a more social Europe are therefore best oriented away from the language of subsidiarity and should focus instead on effective and democratically legitimate ways of delivering the social promises of both the EU and its Member States.