ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book is concerned with how the European Union’s (EU) social inclusion policies are captured and shaped in post-socialist countries that have become members of the EU. Such an issue also recognizes that EU countries with a socialist past have shifted from one main supranational influence to another – from the Soviet Union to the EU. The book shows that policy itself defines and constructs target groups and appropriate measures within the context of the national state. It discusses the gap between the Romanian national disability policies, which are increasingly in compliance with the social model, and the current status of their implementation, still heavily relying on the medical approach. The book describes the challenges in traditional understandings of implementation as designing policies that are then relatively unproblematically adapted and implemented at the local level.
