29Sep2014

Social Justice in the EU – A Cross-national Comparison

Social imbalance in Europe is increasing

First Social Justice Index compares all 28 EU states / In Europe the gap is growing between North and South as well as between young and old / social division threatens the future viability of the European project / European social strategy needed

Dr Daniel Schraad-Tischler and Dr Christian Kroll are authors of the report ‘Social Justice in the EU - A Cross-national Comparison’ published by the German Bertelsmann Stiftung. It is part of SIM Europe, a social policy monitoring instrument for the EU 28. Combining statistical data and expert evaluations, the Social Inclusion Monitor will reveal social erosion and progress and infer policy recommendations.

Concept of social justice is realized to very different extents within the borders of the EU. In fact, EU countries vary considerably in their ability to create a truly inclusive society. Whereas the opportunities for every individual to engage in broad-ranging societal participation are best developed in the wealthy northern European countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands, many other EU countries show what are at times massive deficiencies in this regard. Social injustice has once again clearly increased in recent years, most obviously in the crisis-battered southern European countries of Greece, Spain and Italy, as well as in Ireland and Hungary. However, a predominantly negative trend is also evident overall: In the majority of EU countries, the reach and scope of social justice has declined in the course of the crisis. Only three countries – Poland, Germany and Luxembourg – have proven able to improve significantly in comparison to the 2008 Social Justice Index.

The gap between participation opportunities in the still-wealthy countries of northern Europe and in the crisis-struck southern nations has thus significantly increased. This is a highly explosive situation with regard to societal cohesion and social stability within the European Union. Should these social divisions persist for some time, or even worsen further; this will endanger the future viability of the entire European integration project.

This requires an EU-wide awareness of the problems of currently unsustainable and growing inequalities within the EU. In this context, the future socioeconomic strategy for the EU must be one that is not only concerned with the goal of budgetary consolidation and the resolution of the debt crisis, but also with the aim of combating social injustice within the Union. It ought to be a consistent and integrated strategy not only for economic progress but also for social justice. The present study provides a contribution to this effort. It offers a detailed profile of the strengths and weaknesses of all 28 EU member states across six dimensions constitutive of the goals of social justice: poverty prevention, equitable education, access to the labour market, social cohesion and non-discrimination, health and intergenerational justice.

The top rankings of the Nordic countries and the Netherlands are mainly due to good policy outcomes in the fields of poverty reduction, labour market access and social cohesion and non-discrimination. Although the Nordic countries noticeably feel the effects of the crisis, the degree of social inclusion in these countries is still high. Finland and the Netherlands were recently able to reduce child poverty contrary to the EU-wide trend. In the top ranking countries, the challenge for the future is especially to overcome the continuing poor access opportunities of immigrants to the labour market, as well as fighting the relatively high youth unemployment in Sweden (23.5%) and Finland (19.9%).

But the problems at the lower end of the rankings are of a different quality: Greece suffers from a youth unemployment rate of almost 60 per cent now, a rapid increase in the risk of poverty, not least among children and adolescents (from 28.2 per cent in 2007 to 35.4 per cent in 2012), a health system that has been hard hit by austerity measures, discrimination towards minorities due to increasing radical political forces and a huge mountain of debt as mortgage for future generations. There is a similar picture in the other southern European countries. Youth unemployment is the biggest justice problem in Spain, with a figure of over 55 per cent. In addition, the risk of poverty among children and adolescents at a figure of 32.6 per cent is more than twice as high as the corresponding risk of poverty among older people at 14.5 per cent.

Two reports, the Social Justice Index and the Reform barometer, will be published twice a year and form the Social Inclusion Monitor Europe (SIM Europe). Furthermore, there will be several publications of Social Policy Briefs throughout the year. SIM Europe is a joint research collaboration of Bertelsmann Stiftung and London School of Economics (LSE).