ABSTRACT
The welfare state and the European Union (EU), two of the most important feats of mid-twentieth-century European social engineering, find themselves at a crossroads amidst the turmoil of the Euro-crisis and in the aftermath of the global credit crunch of 2008. The good news is that by 2013 economic growth returned to Europe, five years after the fall of the New York based Lehman Brothers investment bank. While the emergence from the double-dip Great Recession is surely welcome, many leading economists believe Europe’s nascent recovery to be far too feeble to overcome the dramatic social crisis that Europe is confronted with since the beginning of the crisis. Unemployment is at an historic high of 24 million out-of-work EU citizens and this number is likely to continue to rise. Truly catastrophic levels of youth unemployment – far above 50 per cent in countries like Greece and Spain – are threatening the fabric of European societies as adverse growth and employment prospects will imply rising poverty and social exclusion for many years to come.
