Documents social policy 2 992 results

"Les Français ne voudraient plus travailler, les jeunes seraient de plus en plus flemmards, l'État-providence serait devenu trop coûteux, l'intelligence artificielle devrait faire disparaître des millions d'emplois... Autant d'idées reçues qui saturent le débat public, plombent la confiance des citoyens et nous empêchent d'engager nos sociétés dans les politiques essentielles à mettre en oeuvre pour faire face aux multiples crises qui les menacent. Dans des textes courts, vifs et pédagogiques, Dominique Méda montre comment nos sociétés peuvent organiser une reconversion écologique qui met au centre les plus modestes, accorde la plus grande attention aux conditions de travail, repense le rôle de l'entreprise dans la cité et voit dans l'égalité entre hommes et femmes un objectif majeur. Remaniées et enrichies d'une préface inédite, ces réflexions, qui dessinent une vision constructive de l'avenir, sont issues des chroniques de France Culture : "Le pourquoi du comment, économie et social"."

"As Europe grapples with geopolitical upheavals, economic shifts and the urgency of a just, green transition, the future of strong social policies at EU level may seem uncertain. How can the EU balance security and competitiveness without compromising its social and just transition commitments? What lessons can be learned from the successes and setbacks of the von der Leyen I Commission? How will the new economic governance framework affect Social Europe? These are the key questions that guide Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2024.

With the EU entering a new political cycle under the von der Leyen II Commission, concerns are mounting over whether Social Europe can withstand the growing dominance of competitiveness and security imperatives. While significant steps have been taken in the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, the shift toward competitiveness as the EU's primary objective raises doubts over the future of social progress. Moreover, while the frugal nature of the Stability and Growth Pact underpinning the common currency has been somewhat alleviated by a reform of its preventive arm, fiscal consolidation remains a significant policy steamroller. This book assesses key developments such as the Platform Work Directive, advances in pay transparency, and the EU's evolving approach to just transition, while critically examining the changing role of social policy.

The new Commission's focus on skills, training, and quality reflects a broader transformation of the EU's social agenda — one that emphasizes investment in human capital as a means to drive competitiveness. Yet, as this volume highlights, this ‘social investment' approach risks neglecting the buffer function of welfare states: the essential role of social protection in shielding citizens from economic shocks and inequality. In turn, this raises a fundamental question: will Social Europe continue its momentum, or will it be sidelined by the EU's evolving priorities? With rising geopolitical tensions and pressures for increased security spending, the risk of social investment being crowded out is real. The policy shifts documented in this book invite reflection on whether the EU's ‘social turn' of recent years can be sustained — or whether a new paradigm is emerging, one in which social rights must compete for relevance in an era defined by competitiveness and security challenges."

"The revision of the Posting of Workers Directive (PWD) was welcomed as an important step towards a more Social Europe. In this article, we examine how EU member states (MS) implemented the revised directive. We focus on those parts of the directive that should enable MS to reverse previous negative integration by the European Court of Justice. Despite the initial enthusiasm, the revision has led to only minor changes in national labour law. We ask why MS that actively pushed for the revision did not exploit the new regulatory possibilities further. In addition to presenting comparative data on national implementation, we conduct in-depth case studies of countries that supported the revision at the EU level (Denmark, Finland, Germany). Disagreements between employers and trade unions, partisan effects, and institutional misfit between the PWD and national wage-settingsystems explain the limited impact of the revision in these MS. The revision of the PWD shows how difficult it is to politically counteract the market-making impetus of European single market law."

"This book primarily explores the welfare-policy responses to the Great Recession, reform trajectories that swept across Europe over the last decade, with a final chapter that focuses on Covid-19 welfare management. The 2008 crash marked a critical stress test for European welfare states with dramatic repercussions, including a massive surge in unemployment, a widening in wage and income disparities, and rising poverty. Hikes in fiscal deficits and public debt, required to pre-empt an economic meltdown, forced policymakers to make painful cuts in welfare services to shore up public finances, thereby jeopardizing welfare support for vulnerable groups. The overall scope of welfare-policy responses is heterogeneous, disparate, and uneven. In some cases, the response to the Great Recession was accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in others unpopular crisis-management measures received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions, and employer organizations. Alongside serious retrenchments, there have been assertive attempts to rebuild social programmes and institutions, to accommodate policy repertoires-not merely domestically but also at the EU level-to the new realities of the knowledge economy and an ageing society. Overall, the long 2010s showed that the future of work and welfare is in our hands: it is perfectly possible to shape this future in such a way as to provide inclusive social security, achieve high employment, advance and maintain human capabilities across the life-course, and fight poverty and inequality."

"Advocate General Emiliou has delivered an inadequate Opinion on the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive 2022/2041/EU. Following a Danish request to annul this Directive, the Advocate General's Opinion proposes its full annulment based on a historically mistaken and overly extended understanding of the competence exclusion on pay in Art 153(5) TFEU set against a baffling presentation of Social Europe. In this working paper, we first challenge the AG's understanding of the pay competence exclusion which led him to recommend full annulment to the Court of Justice. This includes pointing out that, on one hand, the drafting history of Art 153 TFEU underlines an uncertain, therefore narrow exclusion of pay from EU competence. On the other hand, we place the Opinion in the context of the EU's earlier labour law and the Court's case-law to show the many EU legal instruments that regulate pay already in a way which the Advocate General would consider prohibited under Art 153(5) TFEU, and to emphasise the Court's insistence on a narrow pay competence exclusion. We then consider the Advocate General's inadequate depiction of EU social law around the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive which provided the wrong context for his reasoning on the annulment action. The Court of Justice is entirely free not to follow the Opinion in its reasoning, in its knowledge and in its outcome. The pay competence exclusion in Art 153(5) TFEU should be interpreted narrowly and, therefore, the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive's legal basis maintained."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"The article deals with the history of social Europe in its entirety and draws on the scattered research not only on the history of national welfare states in Europe but also on international social policy since the 1880s and on the social policy of the European Community and its successor, the European Union. It takes into account historical, sociological and political science research in English, French and German. It covers four topics: the general development of the welfare state in Europe, which often, but not always, contrasts sharply with global developments; the variations between European welfare states, which have changed considerably and decreased gradually after the Second World War; the transnational exchange on the welfare state, which was promoted by international organisations and carried by international experts, was by no means always free of tension; and finally, the social policy of the European Community and the European Union, respectively, whose beginnings date back to the period before the First World War and which has acquired its current, often underestimated significance since the 1980s."

"A narrow focus on competitiveness can be regressive from a social and environmental standpoint. This briefing identifies three dimensions to intensify political work geared towards progressive goals: articulate an alternative concept for a prosperous economy that works for all, strengthening socioeconomic governance and advocate for new eco-social instruments. Funds in the next EU long-term budget should increase support for eco-social policies and apply eco-social conditionalities.

"Alors que les transitions verte et numérique sont rapidement montées dans l'ordre des priorités de la Commission von der Leyen, on commence à se rendre compte que leur succès dépend largement du soutien des travailleurs. Le néolibéralisme « barrosien » est en voie de disparition et s'y substitue un nouveau paradigme légitimé par le socle européen des droits sociaux. Ce «tournant social» dans l'élaboration des politiques de l'Union européenne se laisse voir à travers les efforts visant à renforcer les droits des travailleurs et à accroître la responsabilité des entreprises dans la poursuite d'un équilibre planète-personne-profit soutenu par une politique industrielle verte.

Les évolutions connues en 2022 et 2023 que décrit ce livre reflètent ce changement de paradigme. Les revenus des travailleurs sont désormais protégés par une directive sur les salaires minimaux — la toute première législation susceptible de stimuler les négociations collectives (intersectorielles) dans les États membres. Parmi les autres initiatives, citons les efforts en faveur de la transparence des rémunérations, l'augmentation de la représentation des femmes dans les conseils d'administration et les mesures législatives contre la violence à l'égard des femmes. Les pays de l'Union se sont également engagés à renforcer les filets de sécurité sociale, même si c'est par le biais d'une « gouvernance souple ». Parmi ces engagements, figurent notamment ceux de garantir un revenu minimal adéquat et de lancer une plateforme européenne de lutte contre le sans-abrisme.

La santé et la sécurité sur le lieu de travail sont revenues sur le devant de la scène après des années en coulisse, alors même que les risques psychosociaux pourraient constituer le prochain champ de bataille des décideurs politiques de l'UE. Des tentatives sont en cours pour asseoir les comités d'entreprise européens sur des bases plus solides, tandis que les grandes entreprises pourraient bientôt être tenues d'améliorer la transparence de leurs pratiques en matière d'environnement et de droits humains, non seulement au niveau national, mais également tout le long de leurs chaînes d'approvisionnement. De même, la politique industrielle de l'UE ne constitue plus un gros mot, mais un moteur de la transition verte, bien que ce soit encore sans lien clair avec le socle européen des droits sociaux.

Cet état de fait soulève la question de savoir si le changement de paradigme «social» — la mise en œuvre ambitieuse du socle par l'UE — sera maintenu dans le contexte de reprise de l'austérité qui se profile à l'horizon suite à l'adoption récente du nouveau cadre de gouvernance économique de l'UE."

"While the poverty risks of non-standard employment have been explored extensively, this study focuses on the role of activation-oriented social policy in alleviating material deprivation for persons with non-standard employment histories. Using EU-SILC data, individuals over a four-year period were analysed. I focused on substantial earners and distinguished between six non-standard employment histories expected to benefit from activation measures. Multi-level models revealed that compared to standard employment histories, all non-standard employment histories had higher material deprivation risks but to substantially different extents. At the macro level, participation in activation measures, expenditures in formal childcare and minimum income protection reduced material deprivation. Participation in training can be interpreted as an equaliser, as the deprivation gap between standard and most non-standard employment history types diminished. As expenditure- and participation-based measures differed significantly, evaluating the success of activation strategies in reducing inequalities and alleviating poverty highly depends on the measurement of activation."