ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the changes in social policy in Portugal from the mid-1990s to 2018 and the main drivers for such changes. After a brief historical overview of welfare state development in Portugal and of the general structures of welfare provision and its performance, the chapter outlines the trajectories experienced in a set of policy fields (pensions, labour market, health care, long-term care, etc.) by looking at the main policy changes. The influence of the process of European economic and monetary integration, both in the direction and the timing of change, is emphasised. This process explains the modernisation of the Portuguese welfare system in the early 1990s, but also its permanent stress in present days. The main finding is that, in most fields, policy change has been transformative. Labour laws, major social benefit schemes, and social services have experienced changes in tools, principles, and goals, while new norms of social citizenship have been introduced. As a result, Portugal witnessed a general move towards labour market deregulation and retrenchment in the public provision of a set of social benefits and services. It seems most unlikely that this general move within the current European economic policy model will be reversed.
