The European Council has recently adopted «Europe 2020», the ambitious strategy for «smart, sustainable, inclusive growth» that will direct the action of the community and member countries in the fields of economic, employment, environmental and social policies over the next decade. Quantitative targets – five in all – play a fundamental role in it, and countries must commit themselves to reaching them by 2020 through concrete policy actions. One of the five targets concerns an indicator of poverty and social exclusion, and is fixed in absolute terms: 20 million people outside the poverty area in ten years. It is the conclusion of a long journey begun in Lisbon in 2000, when in the new community coordination of social policies, the indicators were at once considered fundamental ingredients of the process, the aim being to make the outcomes of the interventions more transparent and to compare more easily government action in the different countries and the time taken. The article recalls the fundamental stages in this journey.only subscribers can see the full article

The open method of coordination is a third way between intergovernmental cooperation and community method, in that it leaves an ample margin of manoeuvre to the member states, ensuring both that the Union has a guiding role through a procedure of comparison between the action of European countries in a context of mutual learning. The OMC was designed to ensure the necessary institutional changes and a new democratic legitimacy for the Union; however, as much of the literature indicates, the extension of the open method of coordination does not seem to have achieved these goals. In addition, if the new Treaty institutionalizes the responsibilities for coordination in the Union, a complete “constitutionalization” of the OMC will not be achieved. The incorporation of the Nice Charter of Fundamental European Rights brings out, however, the advance of the process of “constitutionalizing” “social Europe”: social rights are now the fundamental values of the integration process. Nevertheless, the guarantees for social rights given at national level by judges and Constitutional Courts cannot be regarded as interchangeable with those granted by the Community.only subscribers can see the full article