Both before and since the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, decisions were taken about the principles and development of the EEC's social dimension without the participation of the UK. When the six founding member states were drafting the EEC Treaty, the UK was exploring various options and was absent from much of the debate about Europe. The French then vetoed the UK's application to join the EEC for a further 15 years. As an outsider, the UK was not party to any of the decisions taken during that time, but it was compelled to give existing EEC social law supremacy over national law as a condition of membership on joining the EEC in 1973. As with every new wave of membership, European institutions sought to negotiate compromises and trade-offs in the social domain to avoid ‘a race to the bottom’ and to achieve their long-term aim of coordinating a greater diversity of social systems.

From inside the EC, successive UK prime ministers rejected or opted out of European social legislation and programmes that they considered counter to the national interest. Most notably, the UK did not sign up to the 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers and the Agreement on Social Policy (referred to as the Social Chapter) when the Community Charter was incorporated into the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 as the European Union's (EU) social dimension. With Denmark, Ireland and Italy, in 1985 the UK declined to sign up to the Schengen Agreement on passport-free borders within the EEC. Although the UK government belatedly joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1989, with Italy it was forced to withdraw in 1992 when the pound and lira crashed. With Denmark and Sweden, the UK did not join the euro when it was launched in 1999. During his premiership, under pressure from eurosceptics, John Major negotiated the UK government into a position in the social domain where the other member states could go ahead without the UK. His actions meant that the UK had effectively excluded itself from participating in decisions about key interconnected areas of European economic and social policy.