4. Perspectives on the Evolution of European Social Policy

16<strong>4.</strong>3 Sovereignty and Social PolicyDespite the advances in the account of EU social policy developments documentedabove, it might still seem that the EU has a fairly minimalist and restricted role in thedevelopment of social policy. According to this view, the EU has been concerned with theconstruction of the single market, monetary union and other related issues; whateversocial policy it is concerned with has largely been concerned with employment andworkplace issues. Social issues more generally have been the prerogative of memberstates.Liebfried (2005: 244) gives a pithy summary of this positionOn the face of it, the European welfare state does indeed look national. There is noEuropean welfare law granting individual entitlements vis-à-vis Brussels; there areno direct taxes or contributions, and no funding of a ‘social budget’ to back suchentitlements; and there is no Brussels welfare bureaucracy to speak of. ‘Territorialsovereignty’ in social policy, so conventional wisdom holds, is alive and well.The review offered in the first section above seems to support such propositions,notwithstanding what Liebfried terms the ‘plenitude of cheap talk’ about Social Europe.Up until the early 1990s, legislative reform in the area of social policy was restricted tothose areas where the Treaty of Rome, or the single market project, allowed some latitude.The gender-equality provisions are the most significant example of this. Perhaps thesecond area of great significance is the area of occupational health and safety, where EUinput was facilitated by the extension of qualified majority voting through the SEA forfear that national rules could be used as non-tariff barriers to trade.After this, there were significant struggles to decide the range of social issues thatcould be determined by QMV, either under Art. 95 TEC (encompassing harmonization oflegislation so as to avoid distortions of competition) or under the SEA’s exceptions forissues pertaining to health and safety in the workplace. The latter was used to progresswider employment rights such as the Directives on pregnant workers, working time andyoung workers but the first of these directives was opposed by the UK and Italy. Eventhough the introduction of QMV would seem to lessen the possibility of vetoes, Liebfriedconsiders that the watershed and highpoint in the development of social policy mandatesby the EU was reached in the mid-1990s. After this, according to Liebfried, the ‘Commissionwas involved in intensive soul-searching concerning its proper social policy role and thiscontinued all the way through to Eastern enlargement’ (2005: 255). The AmsterdamTreaty’s emphasis on employment combined with member-states’ determination tomaintain their primacy in this area seemed to confirm that the immediate prospect wasfor consolidation with few new initiatives (ibid). This seems to support the ‘sovereignty’view that the relationship between European integration and national social policy wasquite minimal and they were destined to walk along separate paths.However, some important features of EU social policy militate against this view.Concentrating on ‘high’ political disputes at the European Council over the propriety ofEU intervention in the social policy field neglects the impact of ECJ decisions that haveoverlain a regime of mobility-friendly and competition-friendly principles and protocolsupon European welfare states. This aspect of the EU’s social dimension does not seem tohave proceeded from market-correcting efforts but seems to have operated as part of aspill-over process emanating from the ongoing formation of the internal market.