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"Behavioural sciences help refine our understanding of human decision-making. Their insights are immensely relevant for policy-making since public intervention works much better when it targets real people rather than imaginary beings assumed to be perfectly rational. Increasingly, governments around the world are keen to rely on those insights for reshaping public interventions in a wide range of policy areas such as energy, health, financial services and data protection. When policy-making meets behavioural sciences, effective and low-cost regulations can emerge in the form of default rules, smart disclosure and simplification requirements. While behaviourally-informed intervention has a huge potential for policymaking, it also attracts legitimacy and practicability concerns. Nudge and the Law takes a European perspective on those issues and explores the legal implications of the emergent phenomenon of behavioural regulation by focusing on the challenges and opportunities it may offer to EU policy-making and beyond."

Following the French and Dutch rejection of the draft constitutional Treaty, many questions have arisen about the European Union's political model, its social model, its geographical borders and limits, its founding principles and its identity. Is Europe in deep crisis, or is crisis its usual way of operating? Does enlargement consign the project of the founding fathers to history, or does it force today's political leaders to go back to basics? There is no lack of questions and controversies. In a sense, this proves that the EU has now gone beyond technical issues and is becoming a fundamentally political entity. Too soon or too late, some will say, but the debate is now underway.

The contributors to this edition of Social Developments in the European Union examine the European social model, from both the inside and the outside, the governance of the euro zone, the political priorities outlined in the financial perspectives for 2007-2013, and recent and forthcoming enlargements. They also highlight the important role of political, economic and social stakeholders in debate around the "better legislation" initiative, the Lisbon strategy, European social dialogue and the issue of pensions. The forum for debate plainly acquired a strong European dimension in 2005. Perhaps the way out of the present crisis might therefore be to devise a coherent new project and promote the emergence of political players who are prepared to implement it.

"La crise du Covid-19 a ébranlé nos sociétés et nos certitudes. Elle a jeté une lumière crue sur l'absurdité et la dangerosité des discours qui visaient, depuis des dizaines d'années, à discréditer la puissance publique, ne jurant que par " l'efficacité du privé ". Elle a montré la fragilité de notre monde globalisé et, surtout, la responsabilité de notre modèle de développement dans la transmission du virus à l'être humain puis sa propagation.
Cette crise, peut-être encore plus que les précédentes, nous oblige. Elle nous enjoint de tourner la page d'un système économique arrivé à bout de souffle. De rompre avec le néolibéralisme, le productivisme et l'obsession de la croissance. De retrouver le sens des priorités, de ce qui compte vraiment : la protection sociale, la santé, la transition écologique. De renouer avec un État-providence stratège, investisseur et producteur. Une puissance publique au service de l'intérêt général et pleinement inscrite dans le projet européen et la coopération internationale.
À l'image du New Deal mis en oeuvre par le président Roosevelt au lendemain de la crise de 1929 aux États-Unis, c'est un plan ambitieux et pragmatique qui est ici proposé. Un plan qui replace l'économie au service de tous et non plus de quelques-uns, dans le respect des limites de la planète. État employeur en dernier ressort, réduction du temps de travail, revalorisation des bas salaires ; grand plan de rénovation thermique des bâtiments, développement du low-tech comme filière industrielle ; réforme fiscale, encadrement des écarts de salaires ; gestion de la dette... Les solutions existent, elles ne demandent que le courage politique de les mettre en oeuvre !"

"This review focuses on the concept of care, a concept that has never been more popular as a focus of study. It undertakes a critical review, motivated by the breadth of the field and the lack of coherence and linkages across a diverse literature. The review concentrates first on organizing and reviewing the literature in terms of key focus and, second, drawing out the strengths and weaknesses of existing work and making suggestions for how future work might proceed in COVID-19 times. While the existing literature offers many insights, some quite basic things need to be reconsidered, not least definition and conceptualization. Defining care as based on the meeting of perceived welfare-related need, I develop it as comprising need, relations/actors, resources and ideas and values. Each of these dimensions has an inherent disposition towards the study of inequality and it is possible, either by looking at them individually or all together, to identify care as situated in relations of relative power and inequality. The framework allows a set of critical questions to be posed in relation to COVID-19 and the policies and resources that have been mustered in response."

"This paper looks at the social policy responses to the Great Recession and the COVID-19 crisis and assesses their impact on preserving living standards in Ireland. The former crisis was in an environment pressured to balance budgets with a greater focus on cost reduction. In contrast, during the COVID-19 crisis, there was a greater focus on mitigating the impact on household incomes largely funded by debt. Another innovation in the current crisis were the joint public and private responses through social partnership. Using the microsimulation methodology, we find a stronger social policy response during the COVID-19 crisis than during the financial crisis. However, as the impact of the COVID-19 crisis was deeper and quicker, family support was not as strong as there were more individuals out of work. The contribution of the private support based on social partnership, however, was stronger. As a result, those on lower incomes ended up with higher disposable incomes at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, albeit with policy learning, this fell over the first wave of the pandemic. We conclude by reporting a positive impact on trust in public institutions during the COVID-19 crisis as opposed to a decline during the financial crisis."