Introduction

In May 2004, after a long period of preparation, eight former state-socialist countries joined the European Union (EU). The entry of these new member states (NMS) raises a number of questions concerning the relationship between the enlargement of the EU and the European Social Model (ESM). For some, enlargement is a threat to the ESM. It is argued that, in combination with the restrictive conditions set by the European Monetary Union (EMU), enlargement may shift the balance of power on the labour market to the employers, lead to higher income inequality and result in a partial dismantling of the welfare state to the detriment of the poor (Kittel, 2002). According to others, the ESM may be undermined because of the weakness of social policy in the NMS and their inclination towards neoliberalism (Vaughan-Whitehead, 2003). If one accepts Scharpf 's assertion that, in social policy terms, the EU has been incapable of effective action because of the diverging interests of the EU15 in this area (Scharpf, 1997), then enlargement is bound to diminish this effectiveness still further. For many actors in the NMS, accession to the EU has been considered the ‘telos of transition’ (Orenstein, 1998, p 480), the final step in breaking with the state-socialist past and in joining the modern democratic-capitalist world, a step expected to bring both economic and social benefits, stemming from, among other things, the ESM.

Assessment of the relationship between enlargement and the ESM depends first of all, however, on the definition of what the ESM is all about, and different definitions will lead to different perspectives. In Chapter One of this volume, Jepsen and Serrano Pascual identify two major ways of understanding the ESM: (a) an historical acquis, characterised by specific common institutions, values and outcomes; and (b) a European political project, aiming to solve shared problems and working towards a distinctive transnational model, including common goals, rules and standards, and a certain degree of transnational cohesion.

The historical acquis approach leads to two sets of questions. The first is whether the NMS are part of the ESM, whether, that is, they sufficiently resemble the EU15 in this respect, and, if so, how this has come about.