| Abstract: | The problems that social and labour market institutions are facing today are often attributed to globalisation and ageing.
This article argues that globalisation merely exposes inherent weaknesses in social institutions while ageing aggravates them,
but that neither of the two phenomena is the fundamental cause of the challenges. Moreover, there is no inherent trade-off
between social and economic policies, but to reconcile the policies comprehensive modernisation is needed. Each country can
face the challenges should they wish to do so and converging to a single social model is neither needed nor wanted. Finally,
European (economic) and national (social) policies become increasingly intertwined and this calls for a new role for Europe.
* Bureau of European Policy Advisers, European Commission.
The authors would like to thank Tassos Belessiotis for his valuable comments. The authors would also like to thank their colleagues
Declan Costello, Georg Fischer, Agnes Hubert, Frédéric Lerais, Mattias Levin, Roger Liddle and Jér?me Vignon. In addition
valuable comments by Lans Bovenberg, Gosta Esping-Andersen, Ruud de Mooij, Frederick van der Ploeg and Fritz Scharpf were
appreciated. The views expressed in this article are the views of the authors and do not bind the European Commission. |
