EU employment policy and social citizenship (2009–2022): an inclusive turn after the Social Pillar?

When does the EU employment growth agenda also serve social progress? Scholars concerned with the equality/efficiency trade-off generally look at the EU as an agenda-setter. Little attention has yet been paid to its role as direct provider of social rights. Building on a data set of 71 EU measures and 317 judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU, this article evaluates the extent to which EU employment policies helped to advance social citizenship by assessing the scope and distribution of individual entitlements over time (2009–2022). Our findings show that, after almost two decades of silence, the EU not only expanded the scope of its influence over individual social rights but also took an inclusive turn, driven by more ‘universalising’ and ‘capacitating’ initiatives. Looking ahead, better monitoring of the distributive profile of EU initiatives indirectly affecting rights production (such as SURE or the Recovery and Resilience Facility) would help to ensure that this shift increasingly benefits those needing it the most.