Welfare Federalism in the Making? Welfare Policies, Member States and the EU

Abstract

The founding Treaties of the European Communities foresaw a clear separation between integrated economic policies at the European level and the welfare state, left in the Member States’ hands. However, the four freedoms of the European Union have developed an increasing impact on national welfare sovereignty, limiting Member States’ capacities to steer welfare policies as they see fit (Leibfried/Pierson 1995) and questioning the feasibility of such a ‘decoupling’ (Scharpf 2002) between the economic and social spheres. Parallel to the basic coordination of national welfare benefits which eventually resulted in the adoption of several directives and regulations, EU law has expanded its remit over Member States’ welfare policies using the legal basis offered by the Treaty of Rome article on equal pay for women and men. Today, several directives and an important European Court of Justice case law enforces gender equality in Member States’ employment related legislation. In the domains of work-life reconciliation and childcare, Member States are simultaneously bound by hard EU law and exposed to soft law and discourses produced by EU institutions influencing the framing and wording of domestic policy-making pertaining to these topics (Lombardo and Forest 2012). Citizens’ possibilities to transfer welfare benefits (access to healthcare or pension benefits) from one Member State to another have been enlarged in particular through so-called “negative integration”, mainly characterized by decisive rulings of the ECJ. At the same time, regional authorities have the possibility to engage in cross-border cooperation with other Member States’ regions in order to foster transnational projects in the domain of economic and welfare policies. The Social Protocol attached to the Maastricht Treaty (1992) and the amendments introduced in Amsterdam (1997) can be considered as turning points in this process. European Integration has not yet led to an “end of territoriality” (Obermaier 2009), but processes such as the Lisbon Agenda and the introduction of the Open Method of Coordination are potentially changing further the room of manoeuvre that Member States have to decide and implement welfare policies, and national welfare reforms show an increasing reference to “Europe” (Kvist/Saari 2007; Graziano/Jacquot/Palier 2011). Summing up, these processes, characterised by different dynamics (positive vs. negative integration) and by the use of a variety of modes of governance, have led to the creation of a complex, multi-level and multi-actor social space in which new stakeholders and new (Europeanized) interests - as well as shared competencies between the national and the European level - have emerged. Moreover, this social space is internally highly differentiated since it presents different degrees of integration according to specific policy fields. In fact, while in the field of labour regulations we can even witness the creation of a “corporatist policy community” with European associations of employers’ and labour unions (Falkner 1998); this does not hold true for other domains such as employment policies, healthcare, long-term care or pensions. In other words, while it is sure that these processes have implied a “restructuring” of the traditional (national) welfare boundaries (Ferrera 2005), it is not so clear how the new (European) social sphere can be interpreted. Overall, one could claim that these developments bear some resemblance to the development of welfare competencies in federal nation states. Although, in contrast to federal states, the EU has no power to create new redistributive policies or to introduce taxes for funding social policies, European law can create regulatory “patchwork bypasses” (Leibfried/Castles/Obinger 2005) which could lead to a quasi EU federalism with regard to welfare policies. The panel will therefore explore this possibility, by addressing the question whether we are witnessing some kind of Welfare Federalism in the making. Theoretical as well as empirical contributions concentrating on welfare policies, actors, the shaping of interests, institutional adaptations or comparisons with federal states such as the USA would be welcome. Bibliography Falkner, Gerda (1998): EU Social Policy in the 1990s. Towards a corporatist policy community, 6. London: Routledge. Ferrera, Maurizio (2005): The boundaries of welfare. European integration and the new spatial politics of social protection. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Graziano, Paolo, Sophie Jacquot, and Bruno Palier (2011): The EU and the domestic politics of welfare state reforms. Europa, Europae. Houndmills, Basingstoke Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Heidenreich, M. And Jonathan Zeitlin (2009) (eds.), Changing European Employment and Welfare Regimes: the Influence of the Open Method of Coordination on National Reforms, London: Routledge Kvist, Jon, and Juho Saari, eds.(2007): The europeanisation of social protection. Bristol: Policy Press Leibfried, Stephan and Paul Pierson (1995): European social policy. Between fragmentation and integration. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution. Leibfried, Stephan, Francis G. Castles, and Herbert Obinger (2005): Federalism and the welfare state. New world and European experiences. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Lombardo, Emanuela, and Forest, Maxime, eds. (2012): The Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies: A Discursive-Sociological Approach, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Obermaier, Andreas J. (2009): The end of territoriality? The impact of ECJ rulings on British, German and French social policy. Farnham, England ;, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Scharpf, F.W. (2002), The European Social Model: Coping with the Challenges of Diversity, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40, pp. 645-670

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