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The Lisbon strategy is a community approach designed to create learning opportunities for one’s national system and that of other countries, with the aim of encouraging the best solutions, selecting the best practices and using indicators as benchmarking. It is a process that has made the idea of convergence a reality, aiming at getting those involved to redefine their strategic and political priorities under the effect of continuous learning. However, it is clear that none of the indicators adopted at Lisbon or immediately after will be reached in 2010. It is therefore a failure that is not limited just to the social area. Using the most recent data, the article discusses the reasons for this partial failure and concludes with some suggestions for possible solutions.

The Lisbon Strategy’s architecture of governance was modified, formally or informally, various times in the course of its ten years of life. This study dwells on these changes, contributing to the ongoing debate on the future of the Lisbon Strategy and the appropriate architecture of governance for coordinating Eu policies after 2010. The paper is in two main parts; the first reconsiders the governance of the Lisbon Strategy since March 2000, giving a general critical view of the three main phases of its development. The second looks forward, examining an appropriate future architecture of governance for coordinating Eu policies after 2010. The last part assesses the probable outcomes of the ongoing debate on the Lisbon Strategy post-2010, on the basis of the information available at the moment of writing.

Since 2004 the Lisbon Strategy has been centred on structural reforms and economic prescriptions, while at the conclusion of the Lisbon summit a different strategy, organized partly around methods open to coordination, had introduced genuine innovation, with the hope of a real acceptance at community level of Europe’s “social dimension”. Since the second Kok Report things have changed. Important later events completely changed the picture, to say nothing of the economic crisis that exploded in 2007-2008. In these conditions we still need to establish the global balance of what is known by metonymy as “Lisbon”. This article tries to trace the main lines of the story. If we restrict ourselves to the social material of the Lisbon strategy, as two symbolic examples show (the implementation of social protection and flexicurity), it has not kept its promises. In the end it has been only a discourse accompanying the economic reforms, against a background of growing importance for community law, and privileges economic freedom over social rights.

This article is an introduction to a first and incomplete assessment of the influence of the Lisbon Strategy on the European social model. This exercise is complex for various reasons: first, because of the complexity of the Strategy; secondly because of the difficulty in identifying a clear definition of the European social model. On the basis of the existing literature and the main indicators proposed by the Strategy itself, we try in each case to suggest some reflections on the (limited) success and the (many) limitations of the Strategy. By this we mean the contents of the Lisbon Agenda and its influence on the modernization of the European social model, and also the development of the southern-European welfare model (further removed from the aims of Lisbon and so subject to greater pressure). We also study the procedural aspects of the Strategy and its capacity to influence participation, the learning process and the institutional capacities of individual member countries. The article ends with a comment on the lights and shadows linked to the implementation of the Strategy and (substantive and procedural) tensions that are still to be resolved.

For long-time observers of EU social and employment policies it is hardly surprising that the concept of flexicurity has gradually become a central concern in EU reform initiatives. The linguistically awkward combination of flexibility and security into flexicurity captures well the essence of European economic policy making since its inception and it is a good example of the distinct character of the European Social Model: a balancing of economic and social interests that understands social and employment policy as an integral part of economic policy and an important factor of production in the European economy. Flexicurity forms part of efforts to introduce new modes of governance and a greater reliance on soft law instruments in European policy making. It will be argued in the following that we increasingly witness elements of reflexivity in these supranational efforts of policy making. The central thesis of the paper is that in order for soft forms of governance to be effective, European law and policy must become reflexive. In the areas of European social and employment policies, flexicurity and the debate over a European Social Model play an important role in this process.

In the European Union the organization and management of pensions systems is the exclusive concern of the member states; since 2001, however, community intervention on pensions has been envisaged through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). This article considers the contents of OMC-pensions and their capacity to influence national pensions policies, with particular reference to Italy; it also assesses the extent to which the public contributions system introduced in Italy by the 1995 reform makes it possible to pursue different aims on the basis of the open method of coordination (sustainability, adequacy and modernization), also identifying the main critical features in the system.

This article analyses the role of the OECD through its “Jobs Strategy” and the EU through the “European Employment Strategy” in the development of macro-economic, employment and labour market policy in the Czech Republic. As a full member of the two organisations, the Czech Republic has been subject to their soft non-binding policy advice in the area of labour market reform. The OECD and EU policy models are similar, both insisting on growth-oriented macro-economic policy, supported by active labour market policies, an active and effective public employment service and the de-regulation of labour markets, but the OECD actively advocates private actor involvement in labour markets, while the EU insists on the role of the public sector. The The public employment service – key for both organisations – has been developed institutionally to fit both models. However, the effect is weak since activation, shifts in expenditure from passive to active labour market policy, training and placement of the PES has not changed substantially since the Czech Republic became member of the EU, suggesting the real impact of the OECD and also the EU, even when accompanied by the ESF, is weak.

The article analyses how three different instruments of European social policy with different convergence capacity have been implemented in Portugal and try to understand the factors that explain the different degrees of change in domestic policies in response to European pressures. Herein, the author claims that the reasons for compliance rest in the combination of a conducive context created by a strong European legacy in domestic policies with the convergence between the European pressure and the domestic policy agenda in policy arenas whose characteristics facilitate policy change. The author makes the case that there is no dualism between a politicisation and a socialisation approach. In fact, even considering the predominance of politicization mechanisms, he argues that when compliance occurs, both mechanisms are present. The argument is that responses to European pressures reflect not only the introduction of new incentive structures but also the creation of new patterns of social relations. And this is particularly true for European social policies.