Social Policy

Abstract

Since EU social policy was of “second order importance” during the early decades of European integration, the academic debate revolved more around the shift of policy making to the European level, rather than being focused at the domestic adaptation to European integration. For a long time, the predominant issue of scholarly concern was how scarce EC competence initially was in the social field and, in addition, what should — or should not — be tackled at a level above that of the nation-state. More, or often rather less, analytical descriptions of what the EU actually did in the social realm hence dominate the relevant academic writing, at least on a quantitative level. Europeanization in the more narrow sense of top-down impact on the member states has been studied much less intensely, the practical reason without any doubt being that there are methodological and practical hurdles to be overcome.