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Combating Social Exclusion: The EU's Contribution

The purpose of this short note is to provide an account and review of EU policy developments with respect to social exclusion. Policy initiatives designed to assist Member States in their fight against poverty and social exclusion have featured on the EU policy agenda over the last three decades. However, in recent years the issue has received renewed and sustained attention following the setting at the 2000 European Council meeting at Lisbon, by the heads of State and government, of the strategic goal for the EU to become by 2010 ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy capable of sustainable economic growth and with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’. Employment, economic and social policies are now presented as interrelated and mutually reinforcing, with social cohesion being critical to economic success. The goal of delivering this ‘Lisbon agenda’ has, for the past five years, been framing the EU’s activities. According to the 2000 Social Policy Agenda, achieving the Lisbon agenda goals requires a social policy strategy aimed at ‘modernising the European Social Model, investing in people and combating social exclusion’ (COM (2000) 379 final, p 5). Social exclusion, the Commission explains, may be defined as a multidimensional process, whereby ‘people are pushed to the edge of society and prevented from participating fully [in economic, social, political and cultural life] by virtue of their poverty’ (Commission and Council, Second Joint Inclusion Report, 2004). Indeed, social exclusion is seen as the ‘greatest threat’ to social cohesion. The combating of social exclusion also feeds into a broader theme of the promotion of solidarity, which is now to be found amongst the EU’s objectives as set out in the new Constitutional Treaty. Further, concerns with issues of social cohesion and exclusion have been heightened with the enlargement to 25 Member States in May 2004, through the accession of ten new states with very different welfare traditions from the already diverse systems represented amongst the ‘old’ states. The capacity of all States to meet their welfare commitments to their citizens is, of course, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law Vol. 27, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 113–120