Authors Iain Begg | Gabriel Glöckler | Anke Hassel ... - The Europaeum

Chapter 9
Towards a
European safety net
Anke Hassel
Compared to other world regions, the EU is a forerunner in combining
free market economies with a social agenda. No other region in the world
has achieved both high rates of income equality and social protection
for the poor. Similarly, no other region in the world has a similar level
of social public spending. The social reality of Europe has traditionally
included a premium of social inequality. At the Lisbon European Council
in March 2000, the European Union explicitly set itself a new strategic
goal for the next decade: “to become the most competitive and dynamic
knowledge based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic
growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”. 1 Since
the summit the EU has used the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) as
a framework to coordinate policies at the national level in order to attain
the goals of simultaneous economic progress and social inclusion.
However two recent trends have had adverse effects on social cohesion
within the EU: first, the access of the new member states has widened the
economic and social inequality within and between member states and
second, within the majority of member states, income distribution, wage
inequality and in particular the share of in-work poverty has tended to
widen over the last decade. Rather than achieving greater social cohesion,
social cohesion has become more brittle. While it is likely that these trends
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