"This contribution analyses the impact of EU and national activation policy on the design of welfare state policies. One aspect that will be discussed are the guarantees concerning the right to work, the right to freely choose an occupation and the right to social security, more particularly with regard to unemployment benefits. The right to work and to freely choose an occupation will be analysed in the light of the generally perceived paradigm shift away from treating unemployment benefits as rights towards benefits that depend on fulfilling conditions relating to activation and re-integration in paid employment. The question is whether these changes in benefit systems towards a contractual entitlement based on conditional reciprocity eventually change the character of the right to social security as a fundamental social right which States are to secure."

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