CSB Working Paper, 2016, 1: Decent incomes for the poor which role for Europe?

Social policy remains an exclusive national competence within the EU. As a consequence, EU involvement has generally been limited to the definition of nonbinding social outcome targets, a governance model known as ‘second order output governance’ (Vandenbroucke, Cantillon, Van Mechelen, Goedemé, & Van Lancker, 2013). However, many EU Member States have failed to make progress in fighting poverty. This begs the question whether a more performant EU level involvement in the field of social pol…

Social policy remains an exclusive national competence within the EU. As a consequence, EU involvement has generally been limited to the definition of nonbinding social outcome targets, a governance model known as ‘second order output governance’ (Vandenbroucke, Cantillon, Van Mechelen, Goedemé, & Van Lancker, 2013). However, many EU Member States have failed to make progress in fighting poverty. This begs the question whether a more performant EU level involvement in the field of social policy is conceivable. In this paper, we argue that European minimum standards are the place to start, including principles for minimum social security and minimum wages. We propose to include policy indicators regarding minimum income protection sensu lato in the recently revised EU monitoring process of the European Semester.