Oldal 68 [68]
66 ] Zsófia Kollányi
Lastly, we must respond to the rise in inegualities by boosting our social policies. That
is why we proclaimed the European Pillar of Social Rights. The Pillars principles
range from wages to social protection systems, from minimum income to gender
equality, from childcare to old-age income, and from health care to access to housing.
(European Parliament 2017)
Others, however, expressed strong doubts, and such reservations were aired
from different sides of the political aisle: conservative and liberal politicians
alike disagree with the method, insisting that the real solution would be not
to tinker with social policy but to increase the flexibility of labour markets,
increase competitiveness, and cut taxes. They believe that such measures
would put Europe back on track. Others, mostly on the left of the political
spectrum, believe that the EPSR in its proposed form will be a mere fig leaf,
and they either refer to the Pillars as merely symbolic instruments (Borner
2019) or claim that as the EPSR is not more than “the summary of the EU’s
current acquis social, no major improvements can be expected” (Seikel 2021).
Another stream of strong opposition to the EPSR specifically, as well as to
the general idea that the current social problems of the Union should and could
be solved through social policy measures, stems from those who stress that the
deterioration in social cohesion is primarily the result of austerity measures
and forced fiscal restrictions for the sake of monetary stability, which were
enacted during the hardest years of the crisis (Seikel 2021). Consequently,
this view holds, it is the rules of the European Monetary Union as well as of
EU-level macroeconomic policy that need to be reconsidered.
Some analysts argue that “the main imbalances between economic and
social priorities at the EU level risk remaining basically untouched by the
Social Pillar as such” (Vesan and Corti 2019). Leaving aside for the time being
whether these are adequate steps towards a more content Union with more
popular support, or not, the insistence on national sovereignty regarding
redistributive policies is basically blocking any real active social policy measure
at the community level (Notermans 2019). This issue is often raised by a
variety of actors, as it was the case also in the European Parliament during
the debate on inequalities in 2017 (European Parliament 2017).
Social policy is without a doubt one of the policy areas that - apart from
the abovementioned dimensions mostly related to employment and the
transferability of social rights - have remained to the largest extent within
the regulatory competence of Member States. When trying to define the
European Social Model, some argue that even today this is no more than the
sum of national social systems rather than a jointly developed entity (Seikel
2021). Even in the mid-2010s, theoreticians pointed out how vaguely defined
the European Social Model was - which might even be a deliberately used
technique to avoid a direct conflict between conservative (typically against)
and social democratic (typically for) forces, as the prevailing model allows all