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

will be reinforced rather than contained by the financial and economic
crisis, the issue of social cohesion and inequality has now become political
priority in most EU member states.
Given the new inequalities and pressures on the low-paid/low-skilled
in most European states, the idea of a “European safety net” is now on
the agenda. This idea is, however, confronted with world-wide trends
towards an increasing social inequality driven by a combination of
economic liberalisation, internationalisation and the demise of protective
institutions, particularly trade unions. It is also hampered by the vast
variety of welfare and labour market structures in the European member
states. Welfare states, transfer payments and labour market regulations
interact at the national level, and European regulations/policies may not
be appropriate for preserving high levels of equality in Europe. Should
there be a European policy agenda on ensuring a general safety net? Has
the Lisbon agenda sufficiently articulated the challenges and policy options
of achieving economic progress and social cohesion? Or do we need a new
and more radical approach towards social equality in a globalised world?
As we will see in the following, the EU has in the past successfully helped to
shift the debate from welfare rich inactivity towards activation, liberalisation
and flexibility through the Lisbon agenda. The post-Lisbon agenda should
now advocate a recalibration of the EU policy agenda towards a “highemployment,
high equality society” 2 , in which activation policies are
embedded in measures containing widening social inequality.
High employment remains on the policy agenda for several reasons. First,
only high employment levels enable European societies to cope with
ageing and new economic competition in the world economy. Second,
rising skill expectations and investments in education depend on the use
of these skills in the labour market. And third, only high employment
levels generate sufficient tax returns to finance large welfare states.
The policy problem of simultaneously pushing for employment growth and
social cohesion lies in the increasing gap between productivity levels of the
low and high skilled. This gap is exacerbated by increasing globalisation
which allows for the off-shoring of low skilled tasks in the value chain. For
workers in advanced industrial economies and extensive welfare states,
this means that pushing up transfer payments and wage levels for the low
skilled in order to reduce poverty runs the risk of reducing employment
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After the crisis: A new socio-economic settlement for the EU