Join us for the second webinar of the Autumn 2026 Webinar Series as João Paulo Magalhãe from the University of Edinburgh presents “The Political Economy of the EU Social Contract: something to give“.
In this episode we will explore:
- How EU budget rules and market pressures can make social promises harder to deliver
- Insights from Portugal, France and Denmark on supporting the self-employed when they are sick or out of work
- How linking EU funding could help strengthen social protection
Register your attendance here!
Presentation Abstract
What defends the European Union (EU) in volatile times is not only borders or markets, but a credible social contract. Yet the EU’s current mix of soft social coordination and hard fiscal rules arguably leaves a legitimacy gap where recommendations to improve social protection rarely “bite”, while budget constraints and market discipline (“bond vigilantes”) limit the expansion of core social rights. This is evident within the European economic governance framework, as the interaction between the binding fiscal rules of public budgets have to coexist with the electoral demand to expand social rights and current expenditure.
Drawing on semi‑structured interviews with officials in the European Commission and Council of the EU, social partners, and national delegates in Portugal, France, and Denmark on the issue of unemployment and sickness benefits for the self‑employed, this session advances a political‑economy explanation of why the European integration process is increasingly underperforming and under what conditions it might work. It shows that implementation improves where soft law is embedded in shared financing, especially in Member States where EU funds are significant relative to national social expenditure. Conversely, ECOFIN–EPSCO misalignment and weak social partner capacity produce “interaction without influence”. A governance model called governance by coordination finance, underpinned by subsidiarity, is developed to move from exhortation to execution without full federalisation, and it helps defending the EU by restoring credibility to social promises. The findings speak to the current and future EU’s institutional arrangements to secure a social union through increasing legitimacy under tight sovereignty constraints.
Presenter Biography
João Paulo Magalhães is a public health medical doctor and UKRI‑funded PhD candidate in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in health policy, governance and international political economy. He has over eight years’ experience across government, international organisations and development settings, including roles as Health Policy Adviser, Health Diplomat Attaché in Geneva and project management in Guinea‑Bissau. He holds a MSc in Social Sciences (University of Edinburgh) and completed his public health residency programme in the NHS Portugal. He has authored two books and ten peer‑reviewed papers.