[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, this is Feb Stokes, the podcast series of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies from Brussels. My name is Lancelot Andor. I'm the Secretary General of Feb's. And I welcome today Professor Björn Hacker in Brussels, in our headquarters.
Welcome, Björn. Professor Hacker is the professor of the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, also known as the HDW University, if you are looking on the map for this institution, and an author who has been very prolific about the questions of social Europe. Björn, you have been written a lot, and you honored Feb's by delivering to us a primer, an introductory booklet about questions of social Europe.
And I would like to discuss this with you today, because just a few months after printing this book, it's already a big success. A lot of people are looking for it, and we also heard it back from different countries that they would like to have a version in their own language. We heard it back from professors that they really would like to use it in higher education, more specifically. So I think we have an excellent material to discuss. But my first question is exactly about this.
Since you have written so much about the European social policy, how does it differ to you when you need to write a more pedagogical, more introductory text on the same subject? Yeah, thank you. It was really a pleasure when you were asking me to write this introductory book, because you had to go back to the grounds, back to the details of European integration, and asking, what is social Europe? Because social Europe is difficult to catch.
If you read about climate change, if you write about economics, if you read about migration, it's not easier, but you know what to write about. Social Europe is everything. Social Europe is in the member states. Social Europe is on a supranational level. Social Europe is kind of everywhere. And because it's not easy to catch, it was a good work then to go back really to the details and to the beginnings of social Europe.
Because in the beginnings of European integration, social Europe was really only part of the economic integration process. But over the years, over the decades, social Europe developed and developed further. And we had some visions. I put the vision as well in the title of the book. We had some visions. Some of them came to light and others not.
And so it was really good to go back and map a bit the details of social Europe, to map a bit what belongs to the welfare state, what belongs to the supranational level, and where is the thin line between social integration and economic integration. As you mentioned, you go back to history. A lot of people would go back to Jacques Delors. But you went back to Willy Brandt to the 1970s. Can you tell me more about that? Exactly. If you're a social democrat, it's always easy.
If you don't know where exactly to start, you go back to Willy Brandt. And yeah, the interesting thing is that Willy Brandt already in the beginning of the '70s had the idea of a European social union. And in my point of view, this is really nearly forgotten. That this concept of-- it was a more Canadian-inspired concept of steering not only the economy, but steering as well a bit social and employment issues.
And this concept of a European social union from 1972 and 1973, it was a vast concept really to put a social union beside the at-the-time planned monetary and economic union. Of course, this first attempt of an economic and monetary union didn't work out, so did not the social union. But I think from today's point of view, it's important to get back to see what was planned once. What was one of the first visions for social Europe? And where do we stand now?
And of course, later you mentioned Jacques Delors, another very big father figure of social Europe. He revamped some ideas of Willy Brandt some years later in the '80s. And he was successful, of course, with his idea of social dimension and a European social model, which is totally different to an, let's say, American model, a liberal model of the market and the social. Yes, let's elaborate a little bit on Jacques Delors.
Indeed, because in practice, this is a very important beginning for the architecture of the European integration. And indeed, I think what everybody needs to acknowledge is that for Delors, developing the single market and the social dimension was a simultaneous task. And I think this is a very important lesson to the extent that also the study of the social Europe needs to pay attention to the economy and the social policy somehow in an interconnected way.
It's not a unique approach. Why do you think this approach to combine the economic and social analysis is the right way? It's a conditionality. And it was Delors who mentioned that this is a conditionality. If you want to progress with a single market, if you want to progress with a new attempt at the time for economic and monetary union, we need as well to increase the social integration.
Because if not, we have problems between far-reaching economic integration and left behind social integration, left behind and left to the capitals of the member states, to the governments. And this creates new problems, of course, in many fields-- in employment, in many social affairs. And we have seen in the last decades, of course, many problems of social dumping. For example, if you look at wages, if you look at taxes, if you look also at social spending.
So problems created in the single market in the monetary union on these issues and dumping processes by some member states. And that was possible because we didn't have common regulation on these things and not enough cooperation. And it was indeed Delors who said, you can't fall in love with a single market. So it's something where democracy as well comes in. Because people say, OK, we have a single market. We have free movement. We have the euro as a currency.
But you don't fall in love with it. So you want to have social integration as well. And if the national welfare state is not the one who can in a globalized world really protect the people, then they may maybe vote for the extreme right. I think it's a very interesting chapter in the book, which explains the historic evolution of the European integration social dimension.
And after the time of the law and the creation of the single market when, as you said, a lot of important legislation is launched, the next important stage is the introduction of the so-called Lisbon strategy, where the European policy making shifts to a very wide spectrum of policy coordination. Maybe this is not so much talked about today as it was five, 10, or 15 years ago. Can you perhaps highlight the importance of this nevertheless? Of course.
I worked a lot on the governance and on these coordination efforts, because that was the point then, Jacques de Lois' idea in the '80s and the beginning of the '90s. Everybody said, OK, that's great. And in the '19s, we had this euphoria. Everybody wanted more integration. And then in the mid of the '90s, member states said, oh, that is too much sovereignty going to Brussels and Strasbourg. So we have to keep that somehow for us.
And that was also true as well for employment and social policies, and of course, economic policies as well. And instead, we managed in the European Union to develop, as I said, with a single market and with a monetary union, creating a sort of competition in not only competition between enterprises, but competition between welfare states, which welfare state is best adapted to the common European integration model and economic integration model in that regard.
And at the time, when member states did not want to give more sovereignty to Brussels and to Strasbourg, there was born this idea with the European employment strategy and later the open method of coordination. You mentioned the Lisbon strategy and all these 10-year strategies, which came later to say, then, if not integrate, let's cooperate. And that was the idea of policy cooperation. And at the time, I remember, that was really a great idea.
We don't have to have new regulations and directives and so on. So let's just pick some objectives. We find some objectives between the member states. And then everybody goes home to its capitals in the European Union and we try to follow the policies towards reaching these goals. The problem is, we did not have the sanctions. We did not have any rewards for fulfilling the objectives. So it was a lot of cheap talk at the time. And the problem was this cooperation of policies.
I said it's a kind of makeshift bridge. And it was not able to really bring together this far-reaching economic integration on the one hand and the social integration, the market correcting and market shaping integration on the other hand. And therefore, in the last years, you're absolutely right. We don't hear so much about this coordination tool today. Many are talking about distributional issues because these are more hands-on, of course. Let's jump to the current chapter.
And I think we are in a phase which was opened in 2017 with the adoption of the European Pillars of Social Rights. I think that's a very important milestone. Everybody speaks about the significance of the adoption of this social pillar. And the reason, on the other hand, is that it's a very important question which is, how significant change this has brought about? Is it really a game changer?
Is it, again, another chapter in nice paperwork and talking differently about the European social dimension? Or it has also managed to bring about change in practice? Yeah, well, the European Pillars of Social Rights is a milestone in European social integration. It's a proclamation in 2017. We have to go back why it was proclaimed in that year because it followed nearly 10 years of austerity policies in the European Union.
After the financial crisis, the global financial and economic crisis and then especially after the euro crisis, many people and many governments and many people working for the European institutions have seen that we somehow entered a wrong way with the idea of austerity, with the idea of trying to get out of an economic crisis by austerity measures.
And we said, okay, we have done a lot in that regard for the economy, for the banks, for example, in the financial crisis and for the budgets, the public budgets, bring the public budgets out of the deficit and so on. But we lost the social and employment issues completely on the European scale.
And there was a kind of pressure, of course, and the pressure came from different regards, from the public, from many politicians, from the trade unions, of course, saying we have to take care that we not only develop the economy out of a crisis, but that we have an eye as well on the social issues, on the poverty, for example, on the unemployment, the young unemployed rates were really, really high at the time. And then we had the European Pillow of Social Rights and you were
asking me if this is now today to be seen as a game changer. And I would say yes, it is because the European Pillow of Social Rights is today our compass. And it is here to stay. This Pillow of Social Rights, everyone who is talking about European social policy has to reference the European Pillow of Social Rights and its 20 principles. The interesting thing is that these Pillow of Social Rights, the 20 principles, it's just a declaration of intent. It does not belong
to the treaties. And in the preamble, it said it's partly the right of the member states and partly the right of the European Union to further develop and implement these standards. But nevertheless, you will find it in every discussion in every document and therefore, it's a great tool to bring social Europe back to the political agenda.
As you highlight the importance of this document, the Social Pillar, we should not forget mentioning the steps which were made afterwards, the so-called Action Plan in 2021, which indeed ensured that the Social Pillar is not about talking the talk, but also walking the walk, if we can use this
expression. And this Action Plan also brought back what already existed before, but in a kind of more clear way, numerical targets to increase the employment rate, to increase the number of workers who have access to lifelong learning, also to reduce the number of people living in poverty or social exclusion. And of course, this is a little bit of a complex methodology, but I think it's important because it demonstrates that somehow you have to be able to measure the
outcome. There is a lot of paperwork in process, there is a lot of talk at the political level, but at the end of the day, what counts is what the citizens feel, whether they believe that the European Union is something that gives concrete outcomes for them in their daily life. And I think that's a tricky question. To what extent the European citizens really feel that the European Union has a serious social policy? I think we can measure it. And of course, this is important.
I mean, you as a commissioner for social affairs, you were introducing the nucleus of a social scoreboard. And we have today this social scoreboard with many much more indicators. Because at the time when you introduced this first, I think it was five or so, five indicators at the time, we had only the numerical benchmarks for the budgetary things and the budgetary issues. And then of course, we had the macroeconomic scoreboard, which went a lot beyond and you tried
to introduce very well the employment figures there and the unemployment figures. And then with the European pillar of social rights, it really gets broader. And now we have this, I think today these are 17 indicators who really measure where we are, where we stand in the European Union regarding employment, regarding the risk of poverty, regarding the gender gap, regarding educational issues. And this is really important to see and to tell people where we stand, where
their own country stands in comparison to other countries. So are we good or are we bad? Are we in the middle? Are we in the average over or below the average? My problem with this is that it is not really discussed in many member states, political spheres. So I think we would need more discussions on these compared to the economic sphere, the budgetary issues. This is discussed
everywhere. If your budget is not in line with the European regulations of the stability and growth pack, the economic governance framework, then of course, all the media is going, okay, what have you done wrong? What has the government done wrong? What should we do? Should we invest more? Should we invest less? Should we do a story as austerity or not? But on the social issues and
employment and educational issues, we have all the numbers now, but it's not discussed. So I want not only discussions in the European Parliament, I think discussions in the national parliament on these social scoreboard indicators would be really, really important to implement the pillar. And what you mentioned, the social summit in Porto, it helped a bit to set three overarching indicators and goals for these indicators until 2030 to tell member states we want to arrive there.
And every member state has to say, okay, and in that average thing, where is your own country in the next 10 years? And I think this is really important to boost national debates on these. So I would like to see more of these benchmarks, because the problem is if you only have three benchmarks. And on the other hand, these dominant benchmarks of economic integration of budgetary
issues, then maybe the social things, the social issues could get lost. I'm glad you discuss the future a little bit, because I think we should not close our conversation without discussing a little bit more the future of policymaking. Because in 24, I think we are closing a cycle which was very, very productive from the point of view of EU social policy with achievements like a directive or minimum wage coordination, with introducing the shore instrument, which is basically
kind of Europeanized goods are by a scheme with massive financial support. So there are many, many positive measures, these have which have been brought forward in the past five years. But then the question comes, what can the next cycle achieve? Is there still space forward? And what kind of ideas should be brought forward for developing the policy agenda of the next cycle? Oh, I think there are a lot. And what is always important is to keep in mind that we cannot
talk only about social issues. We always have to talk about social issues together with the economic issues. I think this is really important. So if you talk about, you mentioned that the twin transformation, this is nothing which ends in the next years. This is a task for the next decades actually to develop our economies in a cleaver neutral sense and with shaping them, the world of
work with digital issues and AI and all these things. And there we should not forget the social issues because shaping the economy in the twin transformation makes something with the people. So it's important to really help the people making this transformation and developing this transformation and not getting lost by the transformation of the economy. So I think a social framework for the twin transformation is really important. This is one thing. Another
thing is economic crisis. We have experienced so many economic crises and what we have seen in the last crisis is that all the European crisis management every time was focusing first and foremost on the economic issues. Of course, it's an economic crisis, but every economic crisis and every crisis management proteases social outcomes. Not always good, often bad. And therefore, it's so important
that we have crisis instruments, economic crisis instruments to prevent crises. But when the crisis is there, for example, asymmetric shocks hitting the European Union, where monetary policy is not able to really react good to have fiscal stabilizers like a European unemployment insurance, for example, and to look at the impact for the social affairs, to look at the impact for employment, for unemployment,
for poverty, and educational things. Some of these things have been forgotten in the last crisis. We learned from the euro crisis and the austerity regime. The COVID-19 crisis management was much better. You mentioned SURA and the next generation EU, because it has some sort of social indicators in. It didn't have a blind eye on social things. Nevertheless, everybody said this is only temporary, only for this crisis. So I fear the next economic crisis, which will come, that's for
sure, somehow. And with the next economic crisis, there is again this decision, should we do austerity or should we do something again like this more solidaristic approach like we have seen in COVID-19. And then another thing is a bit more general, a third thing that would be social convergence. This is a goal of the European Union and it's written in the treaties and convergence we cannot reach only in economic terms, like Jacques Delors said, you cannot fall in
love with a single market. So we need to go back to the idea of a European social model, of a social dimension, of the economic integration and why not going more back to the idea of brand of a European social union. Well, thank you so much. I think we made a full circle in terms of the history, the evolution and a little bit the future of the social dimension of the European Union. Professor Bjorn Hecker, thank you so much for coming to Brussels and talking with me
today about your book. I congratulate you once more for delivering this and I'm sure this is going to be a great success also in the market because it's a very approachable introduction, but also brings quite a few ideas just like a discussion today. And I also thank our listeners for being with us today. Thank you and goodbye.