The EU social policy context

This chapter departs from the assumption that there are some inherent flaws to poverty alleviation methods of the EU social policy that could hypothetically be tackled, at least partially, by addressing the discrepancy between the proclaimed policy objective to fight poverty and social exclusion and its (lack of) implementation into legally enforceable instruments. As such, it aims to understand why these instruments have not (sufficiently) worked and to expose existing gaps in the current social policy context that could potentially be later addressed by utilising legal instruments. To this end, it analyses the two main policy instruments, namely the Social OMC and the Europe 2020 Strategy. It also studies the extent to which the recent Action Plan to implement the EPSR differs from these, and briefly contemplates the role of social funding in the EU budget. Ultimately, it confirms the initial hypothesis and exposes a number of weaknesses of the current policy strategy in fighting poverty and social exclusion.