Social Europe and Eurozone crisis: The divided states of Europe

This article examines within an interdisciplinary framework the path of Social Europe during the Eurozone crisis. It explains it as a result of a divided and asymmetric European Union of Member States, according to which the crisis management has been mainly framed by the bargaining power of the most powerful Member States, first and foremost Germany, in the absence of credible alternatives. To this end, it first shortly presents the dominant prevailing logic of the interstate federalism at work in the EU. On this basis, it distinguishes three kinds of social policies (through the market, for the market and against the market) to synthesize the content and path of Social Europe from the Treaty of Rome to the turn of the century. Second, it highlights three critical junctures that have changed the deal around the turn of the century and given rise to a new phase of the interstate federalism with far-reaching consequences for Social Europe. Third, it relies on an enriched version of the "liberal intergovernmentalist" approach to explain the national preferences and the uneven bargaining power of Member States in the wake of the Euro area crisis, through an analysis relying on the literature on the comparative political economy. Finally, it explains the asymmetric outcome of the predominant ordoliberal crisis management and its consequences for the social dimension of the European (des-)integration process.