UK Social Policy in the European Union Context

Abstract

One of the most significant developments to affect British social policy was the accession of Britain to the European Economic Community (now the European Union, EU) in 1973. Although EU legislation is extremely limited in scope, as a member state Britain is legally bound to implement certain pieces of social law that have been created and agreed upon at the European level. The EU has often been described as a system of ‘multi-level governance’ (Marks, 1992), or as a ‘multitiered system’ (Leibfried and Pierson, 1995) within which decisions taken by the 15 member states at the EU level have a fundamental effect on both policies and politics at the national level in each of those states.