Social Europe A Manifesto Colin Crouch

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ISBN paperback: 978-3-948314-12-5 ISBN ebook: 978-3-948314-09-5

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Open About the author

Colin Crouch is a professor emeritus of the University of Warwick and external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne. He has published within the fields of comparative European sociology and industrial relations, economic sociology and contemporary issues in British and European politics.

His most recent books include The Globalization Backlash (Polity, 2018), Will the Gig Economy Prevail? (Polity, 2019) and Post-democracy after the Crises (Polity 2020).

Open Preface text

The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has radically changed both the daily lives of people everywhere and the dilemmas facing policymakers. But, despite its dramatic novelty, it reinforces rather than transforms existing confrontations over the direction of social and economic policy. Precisely because it has destroyed so much, it creates spaces for innovations from all sides of those confrontations. We stand at one of those historical moments where choices are made that will shape our lives for decades to come. Who will control that moment?

Viewing the case optimistically, combating the virus has made us all aware of our mutual dependence and the need of humans for co-operation, from the local levels of neighbourhood support that flourished during the lockdowns, to publicly provided health services, and on to the seamless web of global collaboration that characterises scientific research. We have seen that certain large and important needs—such as a sudden mass need for protective equipment, ventilators and

Open The decline of social Europe and the fragmentation of democracy

Two spectres had been stalking Europe since long before the arrival of Covid-19, exercising malign influences over her society and democracy: neoliberalism and xenophobic nationalism. Neoliberalism, the doctrine that markets should rule human affairs with as little intervention from other institutions as possible, has increased inequality while encouraging obsession with the self and disregard for shared needs. It brought us the financial crisis of 2008 and discourages collective action to combat anthropogenic climate change. Xenophobic nationalism is fostering hatred among members of different ethnic groups and nations.

The destructive nature of both—and the urgent need for the assertion of their opposites, recognition of shared common interests and international co-operation—has been laid bare by the struggle with the coronavirus. Coping with disasters of this kind requires strong and well-resourced public-health and other collective services, with spare capacity to respond to crises, as well as citizens

Open Contesting the EU's neoliberal embrace

Left-wing critics of the EU point out that neoliberal assumptions are built into its architecture—if only because, as Fritz Scharpf¹ famously argued, it is far easier to secure cross-national agreement on a negative task (breaking down barriers to markets) than on a positive one (finding new institutions to supplement markets). This structurally determined pro-market bias has been heavily reinforced since the late 1990s by a more directly ideological commitment to neoliberalism in the EU’s decision-making organs. As so often in national politics, European policy-makers of right and left alike tend to see markets and public-policy actions as a zero-sum game: if we want more market, we must have less social policy and vice versa. But the history of the 20th century shows us that the opposite is true and that the two need to proceed together.

As Karl Polanyi² demonstrated in his research on the early industrial revolution in 18th-century England, the extension of markets destroys vario

Open Expanding social Europe and the role of standards

The return to social Europe is urgently needed to address problems in five key areas: combating environmental damage and climate change, reforming globalisation, regulating financialised capitalism, reducing material inequalities and reconciling economic change with workers' needs for security. This last now needs to include restoring normal life in the wake of the coronavirus. These have to be addressed with the full panoply of policy tools common to both national and European levels. There is however one important one where the EU alone has exceptional competence – the setting of standards. This topic will be addressed first.

Standards are not normally at the forefront of political debate, usually being relegated to technical discussions. It is however through standards that a good deal of the regulation needed to restrain excesses of market behaviour can be achieved. The EU has become the world's leader in developing international standards for goods and services. It needs that competence to establish i

Open Conclusion

Frank Vandenbroucke¹ has argued that European monetary union now needs to be completed by moves towards a European social union. This is a fine example of the Polanyian process described at the outset: moves to extend markets need to be accompanied by moves in social policy, partly to help the victims of markets and partly to provide certain resources that the market itself needs for its own efficient operation. Today damage to the environment needs to be added to the list of harms markets impose on society, while the coronavirus pandemic, not to mention other natural disasters, reminds us that markets are helpless in the face of events that affect human life from way outside the sphere of economics.

Considerable damage was done to European prosperity by the ECB’s imposition of strict budget-surplus requirements in the wake of the financial crisis. During subsequent years the bank’s policy has loosened considerably but this has been done in an ad hoc way, adjusting to crises. What is now needed

Open Untitled

Preface

1. P Pochet, 2020, ‘Four scenarios for Europe’s future after the crisis’, Social Europe, 30 April.
2. S. Häusermann and J Gingrich, 2020, ‘Welfare states need reinforcement, not reinvention’, Social Europe, 18 June.

2. Contesting the EU’s neoliberal embrace

1. W Scharpf, 1999, Governing in the European Union, London: Sage.
2. K Polanyi, 1944, The Great Transformation, New York: Rinehart.
3. Il Papa Francisco, 2018, ‘L’economia dello scarto’, Il Sole 24 Ore, 7 September.
4. J G Palma, ‘How does Europe still manage to achieve a relatively low and fairly homogeneous level of inequality in spite of a broad diversity of fundamentals?’, in R Sweeney and R Wilson (eds), 2018, Cherishing All Equally 2019: Inequality in Europe and Ireland, Brussels: Foundation for European Progressive Studies and Dublin: TASC, 19-46.

3. Expanding social Europe and the role of standards

1. See Eurofound, 2019, _The Future of Manufacturing in Europe and Energy Scenario: Employment Im