The 1945 European Social Pact

Abstract

Among the dominant theses of the neoliberal period, exacerbated by the crisis of 2008, is that the European Union would be the builder of the European Social State. In fact, the consolidation of the European Union implied the destruction of the Welfare State. The European Social State was born robust in 1945–1947, ten years before the European Coal and Steel Community (later European Economic Community and the European Union). The EU was consolidated only in the 1980s, after several crises and periods of instability. At the time the EU was brought together, the Social State had begun to enter a crisis, albeit a gradual one. The EU will play a decisive role, through the European Social Fund and the Community Directives, in replacing the Social State (universal policies based on progressive taxation) by Social Assistance (policies focused on the unemployed and the poor based on the transfer of workers’ income of average sectors for poor workers).