From the end of regulatory Social Europe to its distributive re-birth: Mapping EU policy developments

Social Europe has long been described as regulatory in nature (Majone, 1993), highlighting its reliance on regulations and directive. (Re)distributive instruments have traditionally played a minor role both, compared to other areas of EU spending like agriculture, and to social policy at the nation state level. There are signs that this is changing. The EU has increased its financial powers with the Recovery Fund and Next Generation EU. Part of this new funding is spent via existing or new social policy instruments. Regulatory social policy developments, in contrast have been slow. Despite much talk about the European Pillar of Social Rights, newly adopted rules are often non-binding or revise existing instruments rather than conferring genuinely new social rights. This paper seeks to systematically assess the major changes in EU social spending and regulatory social policy over a period of four decades (starting mid-80s): What are the rules and resources that are established? How does the governance of spending and regulation change in terms of competences and controls? Can we confirm the ‘death’ of regulatory Social Europe and do we indeed see its rebirth in distribution? To address these questions it presents new empirical data from the multiannual project “Reconfiguring EU through Spending”. Methodologically it offers a comparative analysis of regulatory and spending instruments in EU social policy. Theoretically it draws on competence control theory to explain how the EU is moving beyond its traditional regulatory state paradigm and what are the implications of this shift for the EU’s problem solving capacity.