ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 reconstructs how the EEC dealt with the link between trade liberalisation and social welfare in the 1970s. The end of the Golden Age and the liberalisation of international movements of capital stimulated new plans for expanding the EEC’s social policies, which brought no meaningful outcomes due to the fragmentation of European labour. The single market project of the mid 1980s reopened the perspectives of European economic integration and brought back the quest for social harmonisation and the development of a strong European social dimension on the EEC agenda of the European Commission and the French social governments. However, the strong opposition of business milieus and some member states, and the feeble support of the left-wing parties, led the project for ‘social Europe’ to a new substantial failure and to a single market accompanied only by a narrow social dimension.
