ABSTRACT
European intervention in the social sphere – and annexed questions such as why, to what
extent and in what way – has long been a vexata quaestio. It has attracted the attention of
a large community of lawyers, policy makers and scholars mainly because it presents the
European Union with a difficult regulatory task, the reason for this being the coexistence of
different national welfare regimes, differing not only in levels of economic development,
but also in their normative and socio-philosophical aspirations and institutional structures
(Scharpf 2002). The different understandings of the “social” also explain the uneasy – at
times conflictual – relationship it has always had with the “economic”, the uncertain place
of social rights in the completion of the Single Market and, more generally, the lack of
coherence at legislative and policy levels. Periods of “embedded liberalism” have been
followed by years of social activism which in turn have been followed by phases of “re-
embedded liberalism”.
