European Social Policy and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges to National Welfare and EU Policy

During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, social policy was one of the most important strategies used by governments to help mitigate the crisis. European Social Policy and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges to National Welfare and EU Policy provides an encompassing and longer-term analysis of the social policy responses of European countries, as well as the European Union (EU), to the challenges of the pandemic. The book asks in which direction the European welfare states, on the one hand, and EU social policy, on the other, are developing as a result of the pandemic with respect to polity, politics, and policy instruments.

European Social Policy and the COVID-19 Pandemic addresses several questions, such as what medium- and long-term effects will the current social policy crisis responses have on the different welfare states? Will the partly improvised, partly only temporary but in every respect diverse and often unprecedented measures lead to novel reform trajectories or even a new welfare state model? What new forms of international cooperation and conflict resolution mechanisms may arise within the social policy domain of the EU?

The questions raised not only concern the future of welfare states in Europe but also EU-level social-policy making and European integration in general. The chapters—written by experts on law, political science, social policy, and sociology—build on various methodological backgrounds and encompass single case studies, comparative policy analyses, and discourse-analytical perspectives.