ABSTRACT
If there were ‘an inextricable link’ between the internal and external actions of the European Union (EU) relating to social policy, as the European Commission has asserted, this might not only give credence to the claim that the EU is seeking to ‘export’ a particular European ‘social model’ internationally but, more signifi cantly, the coherence of its aims could lend a degree of legitimacy to EU actions abroad (Meunier and Nicolaïdes 2006: 912-19). At the very least, EU external relations could not be viewed as hypocritical. In another contemporaneous policy document, the Commission made the further claim that, not only is the EU internal social project aligned to the International Labour Organization (ILO) agenda of ‘decent work’, but that increasing efforts will be made to ensure that its external policies are also (European Commission 2006b: 4, 6-8). 1 This chapter considers these two interesting and potentially inter-related assertions.
