The European tools for social policy in Belgium (ETOS.be) research project, funded by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office, brings together six Belgian, French and Dutch research teams, made up of political scientists, lawyers
and sociologists. This study focuses on the impact of EU-level governance on the Belgian welfare state over the last decades. It looks in particular at the differentiated effects of three EU policy instruments (European law, the European Social Fund and new modes of governance (OMC) on three different policy fields: gender equality, social inclusion and employment.
Even though most of the research resources were focused on Belgium, analysis of the Europeanisation of French and Dutch social policies was undertaken to put the main findings on Belgium into a comparative perspective and to capture Europeanisation as a circular process of uploading (shaping) and downloading (taking) between the domestic and EU levels.
ETOS.be research partners:
- Amsterdams Instituut voor ArbeidsStudies (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
- Centre de Recherches Politiques de Sciences Po (Sciences Po Paris)
- Centrum voor Sociologisch Onderzoek (KULeuven)
- Centre de recherche en science politique (Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis)
- Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche Travail, État et Société (Université catholique de Louvain)