The dark side of the (pink) moon : the role of Europe in the recent evolution of Italian conciliation policies

Conciliation policies have traditionally been very marginal and characterised by limited coherence in the overall employment policy setting of Italy, which is primarily designed to meet the needs and demands of the standard ‘male breadwinner’ model. Nevertheless, over the past ten to fifteen years a number of reforms have addressed conciliation issues in quite a new fashion. The aim of this article is to provide an analysis of the evolution of and changes in conciliation policies in Italy, looking in particular at the ways in which Europe has been used by national policy-makers, i.e. as a point of reference for proposed reforms. After a brief introduction, section 2 offers an overview of the traditional Italian welfare state configuration, and aims to highlight the (limited) effort made within in it to promote the conciliation between paid work and family responsibilities. The third section focuses on recent reforms, in order to assess the extent and dynamics of the changes. Section 4 considers the role played by Europe in domestic policy change, investigating whether and how Europe has been ‘used’ by national political actors to reshape the Italian policy landscape with respect to conciliation policies.