The EU needs a social investment pact

Frank Vandenbroucke , Anton Hemerijck , Bruno Palier (1)

1 CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS)

In this Opinion Paper, we argue that long term-goals of social and economic policy in the EU must not fall victim to short-term policy orientations prompted by the banking crisis that hit the global economy in 2008 and the subsequent financial and fiscal problems affecting the Eurozone and the EU at large. We capture these long-term goals with the notion of a 'social investment imperative'. Social investment is not a new idea per se. We first revisit the social investment perspective as proposed towards the end of the 1990s and draw some lessons from past experience. We maintain that a social investment impetus, given Europe’s adverse demography, is today more acute than ever before. Subsequently, we examine how a renewed social investment perspective can be rescued from one-sided policy orientations prompted by the economic crisis (First paragraph)

Keywords: Eurozone; banking crisis; populist anti-EU parties

Domains: Political science

Frank Vandenbroucke, Anton Hemerijck, Bruno Palier. The EU needs a social investment pact. 2011. ⟨hal-02190281⟩