ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a short overview on the development in the field of social policy over the past 50 or 60 years. It describes the various factors determining the process of Europeanization in the field of social policy. The chapter leads to new spatial architecture of social policy within the European Union. It discusses the consequences of this development for the future of European society. The process of European integration had its origins in the Treaties of Rome of 1957, in which one may discern first attempts to institute social cooperation in addition to economic cooperation. The chapter deals with the development of a European health space that offers European patients many newly won freedoms but at the same time is still clearly shaped by the individual Member States' claims to sovereignty in the domain of their population's healthcare.
