Killing, domesticating or feeding the snake: the implementation of the Europe 2020 anti-poverty component at the national level

A social-friendly institutional re-articulation of the novel Europeanised space of interaction requires the construction of a EU “social space” in order to effectively “nest” national welfare states within the overall spatial architecture of the EU (Ferrera 2009). This has necessarily to be a gradual and complex process since it involves a great number of institutional, political and social actors in a multilevel framework. Moreover, potential tensions may arise along three main dimensions: 1) at the EU level, between economic and social objectives, 2) between supranational and national institutions, with particular reference to the potential conflict between Member States’ social sovereignty/discretion and EU’s regulation, and 3) among Member States regarding the size and mechanisms of cross-national transfers – i.e. “rich” vs “poor” countries. At least to date and with regard to the “core” – that is, the statutory, public, first pillar - national social protection schemes – the emergence of a supranational social space has acknowledged and respected national sovereignty, relying on “soft” governance processes and being heavily dependent on MS’ willingness to comply with established procedures. The main exceptions have been the coordination regime for social security benefits for mobile EU citizens (Van der Mei 2003; Benton 2013) and the non-discrimination and equal treatment provisions in the EU legislation (e.g. Ellis 2005). A realistic medium-term target for the consolidation of the EU’s social space might therefore be the introduction of some institutional wedges, forcing the Member States to align themselves loosely to a European “norm” regarding certain areas of social protection. We can see the setting of precise and measurable social targets within the Europe 2020 strategy as one of the first concrete steps in this direction. The novel European strategy does not only aim at fully integrating the social, especially anti-poverty, dimension within the governance architecture for economic coordination (the European Semester), but it also includes the fight against poverty among the highest policy and political priorities at supranational level with the setting of a common quantified anti-poverty target. On the negative side, however, the governance architecture of the Europe 2020 social dimension is relatively weak, though it is gradually becoming stronger (cf. Agostini et al. 2013, Jessoula et al. 2014a, 2014b, Zeitlin and Vanhercke 2014). Against such backdrop, this chapter analyzes the implementation of the Europe 2020 anti-poverty strategy in five countries: Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, UK. It shows that relatively complex interactions along both the vertical (multi-level) and the horizontal (multi-stakeholder) axes unfolded in the four annual “cycles” (2011-14) after the launch of Europe2020. These interactions were mostly based on (more or less balanced) power relations, which imply both conflicts and cooperative behaviours aimed at some kind of exchange – either symbolic or material. Moreover, we may see the interactions as responses to EU’s attempt to introduce an institutional wedge in the field of anti-poverty policies: the target of lifting at least 20 million people out of poverty or social exclusion by 2020 – with the four related indicators of people “at risk of poverty or social exclusion” (AROPE), “at risk of poverty” (AROP), people in “severe material deprivation” (SMD) or leaving in “low work intensity households” (LWI).