The seminar
Towards an institutional re-embedding of European market society?
Demand, legitimacy and ideas of EU social policy
The integration of social policies at the European level has proceeded in a slow and haphazard fashion over the past decades. Despite common assertions to the contrary, ‘positive integration’ has taken place through the adoption of legislative and other policy instruments. But how can we explain the growing scope and changing direction of the social policy commitment that the EU has built up since the agreement of the ‘Social Chapter’ in 1991? Dominant theories that emphasize divergent national interests, historically ingrained neoliberalism and a market-making institutional bias may well account for the limits to a ‘social Europe’, but less for its actual evolution within these (shifting) boundaries. Following an actor-centred institutionalist perspective, this project turns to changing orientations toward and understandings of ‘good’ social policy – and the appropriate role of the EU in providing it – to shed light on the constrained expansion of the Union’s social dimension. It is structured by two key questions:
- How did ‘new’ ideational repertoires of social rights, social investment and EU legitimacy (vs. national social sovereignty) influence the policy process through learning and discursive contestation?
- And how have the (structural and institutional) limits to the power of such ideas materialized?
About the speaker
Sven Schreurs (EUI) is a doctoral researcher working on European politics and social policy. Under the supervision of Anton Hemerijck, he is working on a dissertation that explores the role of changing ideas about social investment, social rights and the boundaries of legitimate European governance in the evolution of EU social policy from the 1992 conclusion of the Maastricht Treaty to the present. He will be a visiting researcher at the Institut d’études européennes of the ULB under the supervision of Prof. Nathalie Brack.
Practical Information
Speaker: Sven Schreurs (EUI)
Discussant: Prof. Amandine Crespy
Date: March 9th, 2023
Time: 12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Place: Institut d’études européennes. 39 avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 1050. | Campus Solbolsch – ULB | Room Spaak