What next for the welfare state?

Published on 24 September 2010 at 13:03

Given the grim outlook in many EU states, the political pundits who predicted a stormy autumn in Europe are unlikely to be proved wrong. In many countries, harsh austerity packages designed to minimise the impact of the economic crisis and rebalance national budgets have resulted in pay freezes and, in some cases, pay cuts, reductions in welfare payments and the privatisation of certain state services. And Europe’s citizens who are reluctant to forgo the historic benefits of social progress are protesting in the streets. And not just in Western Europe but also in countries where liberal reforms were enthusiastically welcomed at the end of the communist era.

The wave of protest which made the headlines in the French press at the beginning of the month — though that is not to say that it was unexpected — was taken up in Romania where social unrest still prevails and the Czech Republic, before it once again re-emerged in yesterday’s marches in France. And it is now heading southward to Spain where unions have announced a general strike on 29 September to protest against cuts to the welfare state.

It is the fate of the welfare state — and not the financial industry which dragged the EU into the economic crisis — which now hangs in the balance. And Europeans are increasingly worried that the historic achievements of the postwar period — the establishment of public healthcare, free public education, transport systems and other services that are at the heart of the European social model — may now be in jeopardy. There is no denying their political attachment to this social-democratic model, even though in recent weeks, and in particular in Sweden, we have seen a parodoxical shift away from the parties that are supposed to defend it.

One of the reasons for the disaffection expressed by the Swedish vote is a decline in the sense of belonging to the same community and the emergence – or even the exaltation – of national, regional and individual egoism, because European society is now marked by an unprecedented level of fragmentation and inequality. As the British historian Tony Judt pointed out shortly before he died, it is the rise of inequality that is the driving force in social conflict. And it is precisely this inequality that is responsible for the stormy outlook this autumn.

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Gian Paolo Accardo

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