To what extent has Europe adopted a single social model?

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To what extent has Europe adopted a single social model?

The European Social Model is a vision of society that combines sustainable economic growth with ever-improving living and working conditions. This implies full employment, good quality jobs, equal opportunities, social protection for all, social inclusion, and involving citizens in the decisions that affect them.

Economic issues have dominated the life and work of the European Union. Beginning with the experiment in pooling coal and steel production, and moving through customs union, the common agricultural policy (CAP), exchange rate stability, the single market, and the single currency, the EU agenda had been driven in large part by matters involving trade, tariffs, markets, currencies, competition, and labour mobility. It has only been relatively recently that the agenda of integration had broadened to include a wider variety of policy issues, from social affairs to the environment. Social policy deals mainly with questions related to employment, or the rights, opportunities, and benefits provided to potential, actual, or former workers.

By 1985 the European Council was ready to take a further step forward. This was movement towards the creation of a single market. The dream was to promote freedom of access and movement in four key areas; Firstly, legal residents of EU member states would be allowed to live and work in any other member state, and have their professional qualifications recognized. Secondly, currency and capital would be allowed to flow freely across borders, and EU residents could use financial services in any EU country. Thirdly, business could sell their products throughout the EU, and consumers would be free to buy those products in any member state without incurring costs or penalties. Finally, every kind of service, from architecture to banking, insurance, legal aid, medicine and beyond could be offered in any member state regardless of the home base of the provider.

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However, little progress has been made, mainly because the member states continued to go their own ways to economic strategy, protecting national markets and corporations, and wrestling independently to deal with high unemployment, low investment, and slow growth. As community leaders sat down to meet in February 1985, Jacques Delors had just taken over as president of the Commission and was keen to see movement on the single market. This in turn became the basis of the Single European Act (SEA), the first significant change to the Treaty of Rome signed nearly thirty years before. Firstly, Delors recognized that there ...

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