Research Area SPA - Social Policy Analysis: Social Structures & Integration

Up till now European Social Policy has tended to develop through ‘negative’ incentives, i.e. by way of accommodating to the implications of the internal market (in particular the free mobility of persons and services) and as a reaction to the crises of the (national) welfare state. Nation states and socio-economic interest groups organized nationally have thus slowly, albeit steadily, ceased to be the major or sole agenda-setters in social policy. Increasingly, however – and this will constitute the major challenge of the 21st century – for the demand is being leveled to articulate a coherent European Social Policy including a stance on the role of the state as regulator and, specifically, the extent to which the latter can continue to ‘correct’ the inequality arising from the operations of the free market. Future European Social Policy will have to consider the role of civil society in the process of European integration as well as the changing face of ‘inequality’, as new risk groups are emerging, not least among the working population.

Social policy research at the ICCR contributes to this new agenda of European Social Policy. It focuses on the role of social structures, actors and institutions and how they influence policy-making in Member States, the accession countries and the European Union and explores the emerging ‘meaning’ of European citizenship in the framework of economic and political integration.