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de Witte, Floris --- "The architecture of the EU’s social market economy" [2017] ELECD 270; in Koutrakos, Panos; Snell, Jukka (eds), "Research Handbook on the Law of the EU’s Internal Market" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 117

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Law of the EU’s Internal Market

Editor(s): Koutrakos, Panos; Snell, Jukka

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783478095

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: The architecture of the EU’s social market economy

Author(s): de Witte, Floris

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

The fact that a handbook on the internal market devotes only one chapter to social policy is indicative of the nature of the Union’s market. While most theorists – coming from different ideological traditions – suggest that ‘the market’ and ‘the social’ are conceptually and inextricably linked, and mutually bounded by the political sphere; in the Union these elements that ‘make’ the market are structurally separated. The integration process was meant to expand the size of the (economic) cake, and the Member States were meant to redistribute that cake internally, after all: one integrated market and many different national social policies. In this way, the national political establishment would ensure that the functioning of the internal market remained sensitive to the social demands of the electorate (section 2). The initial architecture of the internal market indeed sought to preserve this balance. The purpose of Union social policy was to even out potential economic asymmetries in the market, leaving Member States and their political systems with the task of socially embedding the market. In the early 90s, however, this perspective changed. Partially in response to the Court’s case law on free movement, and partially in response to the potentially destabilising effects of mutual recognition and regulatory competition, Union social policy became geared not towards levelling out conditions of competition in the market, but to protecting explicitly the capacity of Member States to impose their understanding of ‘the social’ on the market.