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Inequalities and Social Europe | 63
DEBATE ON CAUSES AND RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS
- THE CASE OF SOCIAL EUROPE
Given the wide variety in the ways in which actors at the European level
have defined this problem, it is only to be expected that their perceptions of
its roots and potential solutions differ as well. In this section, we present the
main lines of the arguments concerning inequalities, and in the process we
introduce the concept and evolution of a Social Europe.
Considering the many different and often contradictory arguments that
arise during these debates, even the previously clear boundaries between the
respective positions of political coalitions seem to blur (Vesan and Corti 2019).
Both the directions and the suggested areas of action diverge substantially.
They range from completing the integration of social welfare systems to
reducing their current level of integration; from long-term and indirect
actions concerning education and the development of skills to immediate
actions, such as introducing a universal basic income (UBJ) in the euro area.
The European Union came into existence with the general goal of ensuring
peace and stability for the citizens of the participating countries, in order to
avoid the future recurrence of such major traumas as the Second World War
(Dodo 2014). However, how these widely accepted goals could be realised
has been the subject of a seemingly endless debate between advocates of the
economic and the social dimensions.
To put it simply, the former are arguing for economic liberalism and believe
that removing all possible barriers from the market and intensifying economic
integration will produce economic prosperity, which, thanks to workfare and
the trickle-down effect, creates welfare for everyone. Besides a laissez-faire
perspective, this group also advocates the sovereignty of Member States and
caution in further tightening the social bonds of integration (Niklasson 2014).
The latter group, however, who are for an enhanced European authority and
deepening integration, emphasise that society is more than the economy
or than employment, and they point out how the strictly economic focus
may fail societies, deepen social inequalities, ruin cohesion, and cause mass
dissatisfaction, restlessness, and instability.
Nevertheless, the actual integration process has predominantly focused
on the economic aspects, and it has been of the neoliberal, free market¬
focused kind from the very beginning. Consequently, most of the instruments
deployed served the removal of the obstacles in the way of free trade within
the community’s borders (Whyman et al. 2014). Although the social pillar of
Europe has been gradually expanded over the past decades, it has always been
subordinated — or, rather, it was defined to serve — the economic cooperation
and the single market, which were seen as the foundation of the EU (Plomien
2018), similarly to the policies enacted in most other areas.