Digital single market - a new impetus on EU social policy?

2020 ◽  
Vol 338 ◽  
pp. 265-275
Author(s):  
Daniel Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Single Market ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Skills ◽  
Current Reform ◽  
Training Programmes

In July 2019 the new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, presented her guidelines for the period of presidency 2019-2024. While most proposals perpetuate the current reform agenda, the focus on the social dimension of the single market is remarkable. Von der Leyen has not only announced the full implementation of the European Pillar on Social Rights, but also highlighted new investment in digital competences seen as a key to competitiveness and innovation of the European economy. This paper will discuss whether the dynamics of the digital single market could lead to a new impetus on EU social policy and on European funding of training programmes. Therefore, an overview of significant funding programmes promoting digital skills is given.

scholarly journals The social dimension of the modern legal realities

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-26
Author(s):  
Nataliia Onishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Regular Mode ◽  
Practical Sense

We would like to note that the experience gained shows that the functioning of the legal system in the “regular mode” and inextreme conditions have, of course, significant differences: including, and perhaps primarily in the protection of rights, freedoms andlegitimate interests man.It is axiomatic, and this has been confirmed in practice, that it is social human rights that are the defining “concern”. A fewremarks are not so much a textbook textbook on the development of these rights, but on the segments that indicate the need for today’sactualization of their provision and protection.Finally: the purpose of social policy is to ensure the material well-being of citizens, to achieve stability and security of life insociety, the integrity and dynamism of its development. It is known that society remains calm and stable, when the number of dissatisfied or disagree with public policy is not more thantwenty percent of the population.In addition, the implementation of “sound” social policy is impossible today without the following statements: it is important toemphasize that to ensure the practice of social human rights it is necessary to doctrinally develop and implement the category (socialresponsibilities) including social responsibility: state, business, each member civil society. Without proper, corresponding rights to raisethe question of proper social rights, it is neither possible in the theoretical sense nor in the practical sense.

scholarly journals The echr and the Protection of Irregular Migrants in the Social Sphere

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-67
Author(s):  
Sylvie Da Lomba
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
European Court ◽  
Poor Access ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Adjudication

For more than a decade, the Council of Europe has expressed deep concern over irregular migrants’ poor access to basic social rights. With this in mind, I consider the extent to which the European Convention on Human Rights can contribute to protect irregular migrants in the social sphere. To this end, I consider the role of international supervisory bodies in social rights adjudication and discuss the suitability of international adjudication as a means to uphold irregular migrants’ social rights. Having reached the conclusion that international adjudication can help protect irregular migrants’ social rights, I examine the ‘social dimension’ of the European Convention on Human Rights and the significance that the European Court of Human Rights attaches to immigration status. I posit that the importance that the Court attaches to resource and immigration policy considerations in N v. United Kingdom significantly constrains the ability of the European Convention on Human Rights to afford irregular migrants protection in the social sphere.

Marshall revisited: EU social policy from a social-rights perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-435
Author(s):  
Stefanie Börner
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Level ◽  
Social Commitment ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social

The common legal and economic framework of the European Union (EU) has turned the vast socio-economic differences within Europe into virulent problems of social inequality – issues that it attempts to tackle within its limited resources. The article takes the EU’s self-expressed social commitment as a starting point and analyses its approaches to social policy from a social-rights perspective. It first discusses why Marshall’s social-citizenship concept provides a useful analytical tool to assess the social policies enacted so far at the European level and then presents an institutional analysis of the EU’s four major social-policy activities: harmonising, funding, coordination and cooperation. This analysis focuses on the horizontal and vertical relationships and the addressees of these policies to determine how these policies measure up against social-rights standards. The findings point to the poor development of transnational social citizenship given the special nature of EU social policies. The only social rights that exist at the European level are in the field of social-security coordination. And even those are marked by a double selectivity that excludes citizens who are not transnationally active and those who are but lack the necessary means to provide for themselves.

The European social dimension in pension policy

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Willert
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Pension Policy ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Europe 2020 ◽  
Social Objective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Old Age Poverty ◽  
The Eu

This article analyses how the social objective of protecting lower earners from old-age poverty is supported at the EU level. It argues that although the Member States are responsible for pension policy, the EU framework could empower domestic social policy actors by providing them with cognitive and normative resources. The analysis is based on the situation in three countries: Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom. The article shows that there are well developed shared data and indicators, but that there is limited scope for common interpretation of the data. There is also a lack of common policy solutions due to two diverging pension reform paradigms: the adequacy paradigm and the sustainability paradigm. Although the latter increasingly has incorporated an adequacy perspective that limits pure cost containment policies, Europe 2020 limits the scope for positive social policy measures linked to the adequacy approach because it prioritizes a low tax wedge and growth-enhancing initiatives.

scholarly journals The UK out, Social Europe in? Rethinking EU social integration in the wake of Brexit

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-310
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Alexandris Polomarkakis
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Veto Players ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Social Europe

This article considers the impact of Brexit on the future of Social Europe. Through recourse to key moments in the history of European social integration, where Britain more often than not vehemently opposed any coming together, its role as an important veto player in EU social policy-making is established. With the UK set to leave the Union, the option for further social integration is no longer inconceivable. It is featured as one of the possible scenarios in the Reflection Paper on the Social Dimension of Europe, and recent developments, such as the European Pillar of Social Rights, together with its accompanying initiatives, appear to lay the groundwork towards that. The article concludes that, although the realisation of Social Europe is more likely post-Brexit, there are other Member States willing to take over the UK’s role and act as veto players on their own terms.

The Slow Road to the Social Investment Perspective in the European Union

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Dinan
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Social

The European Union has no unilateral legislative capacity in the area of social policy. However, the European Commission does play the role of guide by providing a discursive framework and targets for its 28 Member States to meet. Since the late 1990’s, the EU’s ideas on social policy have moved away from the traditional social protection model towards promoting social inclusion, labour activation and investing in children. These new policies represent the social investment perspective, which advocates preparing the population for a knowledge-based economy to increase economic growth and job creation and to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The EU began the gradual incorporation of the social investment perspective to its social dimension with the adoption of ten-year strategies. Since 2000, it has continued to set goals and benchmarks as well as offer a forum for Member States to coordinate their social initiatives. Drawing on a series of interviews conducted during a research experience in Brussels as well as official documents, this paper is a descriptive analysis of the recent modifications to the EU’s social dimension. It focuses on the changes created by the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Social Investment Package. By tracing the genesis and evolution of these initiatives, the author identifies four obstacles to social investment in the European Union's social dimension.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v10i1.263

Neo-liberalism as an ideology, an elite project and its impact on austerity

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Nigel Malin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Evaluation ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Audit Culture ◽  
Competition State ◽  
Social Agenda ◽  
The Social

This chapter discusses the relevance of neo-liberalism as both an ideology and as a pragmatic approach, defined as a re-making of the state, where the state is not rolled back as such but is re-shaped, re-configured to better serve the demands of capital. Neo-liberalism represents an attempt to replace political judgement with economic evaluation, including, but not exclusively, the evaluations offered by markets. Writers on this subject such as Davies, Gough, Garrett, Peck, Mirowski and Shaxson are referred to where they address globalisation and audit culture, the logic of markets and economic evaluation. It was believed that the economic pressures generated by neo-liberal globalisation would inexorably lead to welfare state entrenchment or its dissolution and replacement by a lean ‘competition’ state. Yet the global rediscovery of poverty and the challenges to territorially-based conceptions of social rights posed by the increasing flow of migrants have put social policy issues on the social agenda.

‘The People’ and Their Social Rights: What Is Distinctive About the Populism-Religion-Social Policy Nexus?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Jawad ◽  
Daniel Béland ◽  
Emmanuele Pavolini
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
North Africa ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Preceding Paper ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The aims of this review article are two-fold: (1) to set out the key theoretical trends in the study of religion, populism and social policy as antithetical concepts that also share common concerns; (2) to re-assert the relevance of social policy to the social and political sciences by making the case for studying outlier or indeed rival topics together – in this case populism and religion. Social policy scholars do not necessarily associate these two topics with modern social policy, yet they have a long history of influence on societies all over the world; populism is also especially timely in our current era. The article contributes to the literature by: (a) helping social policy better understand its diverse and at times contradictory constituencies; (b) contributing to a more complex and inclusive understanding of social policy and, therefore, social welfare. In setting out the state-of-the-art, the article also draws upon research on social policy which spans various continents (North America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America) and a preceding paper collaboration by the authors on religion and social policy (Pavolini et al., 2017).

Social mainstreaming through the European pillar of social rights: Shielding ‘the social’ from ‘the economic’ in EU policymaking

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ane Aranguiz
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Market Economy ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Article 9 ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Market ◽  
The Eu

Implementing fiscal consolidation measures without first considering social stabilisers has led to turn what originally was an economic recession into a social crisis too. The economic and social divergences in Europe have increased to a point where the future of the social dimension of the EU has been put into question. There is however, a provision in the Treaties that obliges the EU to take into account social issues in all its policies and activities, namely, the so-called horizontal social clause enshrined in Article 9 TFEU. The potential of this clause to mainstream the social dimension of the EU and foster balance between social and economic policies has, however, not yet been untapped. The recently launched European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), which aims at achieving a highly competitive social market economy, brings to the table a number of rights-based objectives along with a number of indicators that might shed some light over the constraints faced by the horizontal social clause. This article aims at unravelling the potential of the horizontal social clause in envisioning parity between the social and the economic and providing a social pillar to the EU. This contribution provides first a legal analysis of Article 9 TFEU and it briefly discusses the problematic behind its poor implementation. Later, the potential of the horizontal social clause is discussed in the light of the current developments in the framework of economic governance. This article also suggests a number of scenarios where social mainstreaming should be duly implemented. It suggests that Article 9 TFEU may have an important role, in particular, with regard to austerity measures when envisioning it together with the EPSR.

scholarly journals PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL PROTECTION OF CIVIL SERVANTS

Social Law ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Bezusiy
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Starting Position ◽  
Social Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Management

In the article the principles of social protection of civil servants are defined as the basic provisions stipulated in the rules of social law, which underlie the formation of activities to ensure the social rights of civil servants and which should be guided in determining the ways, methods of exercising their social protection. It is stated that these principles form a system (general and special principles) that helps to form a proper basis for the social protection of civil servants. The author notes that similar in meaning and, as a rule, often used as a synonym for the word "principle" is the concept of "foundation", which has the meaning "basis of something; the main thing that is based on is something; starting position, principle, principle, basis of outlook, rule of behavior; way, method of doing something. " It is noted that the system of social protection of the population should be built both on the general principles of social management, acting on the system itself, and on the individual, which have a specific orientation. The article covers different views of scientists on the principles of social policy, one of these positions is the view regarding the following characteristics of the basic principles - it is rationality (achieving the optimum balance between the purpose of social policy and its means of implementation), social justice (recognition of equal opportunities for all members of society) and social security (the possibility of predictability of certain life risks). The author defines the concept of "principle of social protection of civil servants", and the proper implementation of the theoretical provisions and practical ways of realizing the goal and principles of social protection of civil servants will provide for the formation of functioning of a really effective mechanism for securing and protecting social rights of this special category of working citizens of Ukraine.

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