Saturday, March 15, 2014
Hampton (Omni Shoreham)
One of the main objectives of the European Union (EU) is to improve the working and living conditions of its citizens. Therefore, the EU has several competences regarding employment and social policy, including the subject of social security. In general, the EU has undertaken two initiatives to deal with social security. Firstly, it has adopted several instruments to coordinate social security entitlements of workers that are freely moving within the EU. Secondly, it coordinates the broader social security policy issues of social investment and social protection by means of common objectives. Both coordinative initiatives are underpinned by different governance concepts (rules of private international law and convergence) and governed by different instruments (regulations and the open method of coordination). Together, albeit each in a different way, they impact on the social security systems of the Member States. However, these forms of coordination have never been examined in relation to each other or in the wider context of social security, including social investment and social protection. The aim of this paper is to examine this impact by mapping out the political legitimacy for these coordinative initiatives, by analysing their legal integration dynamics and by analysing their interactions. The paper concludes with reflective considerations on what the analyses means in terms of improving the working and living conditions of the more vulnerable citizens of the EU that depend on social security.
