ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) Convention is experiencing a slow start. It is quite unlikely that the Convention will actually take-off before the German elections. So far, the reference document is the 'Project for the European Union' issued in 2002 by the Commission, which argues in favour of a coordination of social policies. Insofar as our notion of coordination allows for more mobility of the European workforce, it implies that EU citizens can 'vote with their feet' enhancing competition among systems. The most relevant issues concern, instead, the scope of competition that should be promoted and allowed across the various 'Social Europe(s)' characterising the institutional landscape of the Old Continent. The relevance of the economies of scale argument can be assessed by comparing the performance of social welfare systems of small and large EU countries. Immigrants to the EU from non-EU countries tend to receive proportionally more social transfers than the native population.
