ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the UK as a case study, as it provides a particularly strong contrast between ostensible hostility to the interference of the EU with the national welfare state, and eager receptiveness to neoliberalizing principles. Hard law rules coordinating welfare policy and softer measures comprising the European employment strategy together create principles that are transposed from the EU to UK welfare reform. The treatment within the EU of welfare policy as a subset of economic policy forms a significant backdrop to UK national welfare reform. EU migrants can present an epitome of autonomy exerting life choices to migrate and to find work so prove useful models for personal responsibility, in spite of their non-comparability to non-working nationals. The liberal model makes UK authorities wary of narratives of solidarity underpinning a European social model, but amenable to policies promoting conditionality and prioritizing the interests of the economically active over the socially excluded and the vulnerable.
