The Implications of the Lisbon Strategy for the Future of Social Europe: 'On the Road' or 'New Age'?

This paper aims to capture the implications of the Lisbon Strategy (LS), and in particular the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), for the future of Social Europe (SE) at EU level in a diachronic perspective. To do so, three intellectual exercises will be carried out. In the first part I outline the contours of the LS, its aims, achievements, assessments and the reforms it has undergone. The second part presents what I consider to be the structuring meta-features and main characteristics of Social Europe at EU level over 50 years of functioning: 12 key features will be provided for a meta-level analysis. In the third part, I examine to what extent the LS in its social and employment dimensions and the various OMC processes are in line with these 12 key features: the idea is to point out which of these 'traditional' features are taken up and carried forward by the LS (a continuity scheme), and which are the features for which the LS differs from the previous approach, opening new routes for Social Europe (a discontinuity scheme).