Seite 70 [70]
OCR
68 | Zsófia Kollányi CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, we focused on the issue of social inegualities, welfare, and well-being in the EU, and the debates regarding the policy, and especially social policy measures the community could take in order to handle these. We presented the most freguently used diverging definitions as well as the current main streams of political debates. Clearly, several relevant areas had to be omitted. We did not cover the strictly macroeconomic aspects of welfare, how economic growth and economic policy may affect it; neither did we present the welfare effects and critigues towards the utilisation of the structural and cohesion funds, the main tools of the Union to mitigate regional inequalities. From the debates about the role and weight of the social dimension in European policy, a deep controversy takes shape. On the one hand, greater influence of the EU on the formulation of social policy measures currently defined at a national level would sharply contradict the current principles of subsidiarity and national sovereignty, and would question national fiscal policy as a possibility. However, on the other hand, the lack of such measures, considering the enormous income disparities between the Member States, could lead to an increasing disintegration of the community. Besides the fact that inequality needs to be more clearly defined and understood, the only certain point is that the status quo in the EU is very probable to be about to change. The integration either gets further enhanced in order to mitigate the underlying political and social tensions, or these tensions might even tear the European project apart. Key concepts and terms At-risk-of-poverty rate Employment rate European Pillar of Social Rights European Social Model (Social Europe) Income quintile share ratio Material deprivation Median income Social inequality Universal basic income Welfare
