The Quiet Emancipation of Social Europe

Why has the European Union developed a meaningful social dimension, despite decades of scepticism about its capacity—or willingness—to do so? The Quiet Emancipation of Social Europe offers the first comprehensive historical account of EU social and labour policy-making from the Maastricht Treaty to the mid-2020s, explaining how and why the Union has gradually broadened and deepened its involvement in employment, social protection and labour market regulation. Drawing on hundreds of primary documents and over 130 elite interviews with European Commissioners, ministers, officials, MEPs, social partners and experts, Sven Schreurs reconstructs five consecutive episodes of policy development. The book traces the emergence of the European Employment Strategy, the open method of coordination and European social dialogue in the 1990s; the contested institutionalization of social governance during the enlargement decade; the acute tensions of the Eurozone crisis; the revival of the social agenda under the European Pillar of Social Rights; and the resilience of that agenda through the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, culminating in landmark directives on minimum wages and platform work. Against theories that predict either stasis or a systematic market-making bias in EU social policy, this book advances an original explanation centred on two interlocking mechanisms. The first is policy-oriented learnin a transnational network of ministers, officials, experts, and civil society actors has progressively built a shared understanding of social policy as a productive and stabilizing force in modern political economies. The second is legitimation: concerns about the political sustainability of European integration have repeatedly provided impetus—particularly in the aftermath of crises—for expanding the Union's social ambitions. The result is neither a supranational welfare state nor a mere flanking measure to market integration, but a distinctive and evolving architecture of social regulation, coordination, and support. Theoretically ambitious yet empirically grounded, Schreurs makes an essential contribution to debates on European integration, comparative welfare states, and the future of social Europe.