Towards a European MIS

The fight against poverty and social exclusion has been on the European agenda for a long-time. Since the mid-2010s, a number of factors conjured towards stronger mobilization of stakeholders – primarily European social NGOs and also trade unions – at supranational level. Moreover, in recent years, institutional, economic-contextual as well as political factors seemed to build momentum for substantial steps ahead in the field of minimum income protection at the EU. Among these factors: the dramatic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy and labour market; the innovative measures adopted by EU institutions to tackle the economic and social impact of the crisis put an end to the decade long dominant austerity policy framework. The institutional framework for taking action at the supranational level in the field of minimum income protection had already been laid down with the principle 14 of the European Pillar of Social Rights. Against such backdrop this paper aims at assessing both the legal feasibility and the political viability of binding EU’s actions in the field of anti-poverty and social exclusion policies. Relying on qualitative research including the careful analysis of EU’s documents and main actors’ publications, as well as the conduction of several semi-structured interviews with key informants at the supranational level this paper argues that a binding EU’s initiative in the field of minimum income protection is actually feasible within the current constitutional framework. However, since policy development ultimately rests on political conditions and incentives, the paper reconstructs the constellation of actors and power at the supranational level. This allows to conclude that, despite legal feasibility and increased salience of the poverty issue during the pandemic, neither political conditions nor timing seem to be favourable for binding EU’s actions in this key policy field.