[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hdl/wpaper/1205.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The EU and Minimum Income Protection: Clarifying the Policy Conundrum

Author

Listed:
  • Frank Vandenbroucke
  • Bea Cantillon
  • Natascha Van Mechelen
  • Tim Goedemé
  • Anne Van Lancker
Abstract
Should the EU be involved in the governance of minimum income protection, and if it should, in which role precisely? This question raises a complex policy conundrum. We focus on a proposal by the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) for an EU Framework Directive on Minimum Income Protection, in order to examine three aspects of that policy conundrum: (1) the instrumental relevance of minimum income protection; (2) the unequal burden of the redistributive effort that would be required across the EU if the Union were to impose hic et nunc a minimum income guarantee of 60% or 40% of the median national income in all Member States; and (3) the impact on dependency traps, under the same hypothesis. We illustrate each of these observations empirically, using cross-nationally comparable data on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) and minimum income protection levels (CSB-MIPI). Since a harmonised minimum income scheme requires a significantly greater budgetary effort on behalf of some of the poorer Member States in Eastern and Southern Europe, it raises a complex question about the meaning of solidarity within the EU. Enhanced solidarity within Member States cannot be decoupled from enhanced solidarity among Member States – and vice versa. Simultaneously, the EU should put positive pressure on poorer and richer Member States to gradually improve the overall quality and efficiency of their welfare regimes. In this context, the prospect of gradually and flexibly introducing a more binding EU framework on minimum income protection may become realistic.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank Vandenbroucke & Bea Cantillon & Natascha Van Mechelen & Tim Goedemé & Anne Van Lancker, 2012. "The EU and Minimum Income Protection: Clarifying the Policy Conundrum," Working Papers 1205, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    • Handle: RePEc:hdl:wpaper:1205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/oldcontent/container2453/files/CSB%20WP%202012/CSB_WP_12_05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bea Cantillon, 2012. "GINI DP 52: Virtuous Cycles or Vicious Circles? The Need for an EU Agenda on Protection, Social Distribution and Investment," GINI Discussion Papers 52, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    2. Bea Cantillon & Natascha Van Mechelen & Olivier Pintelon & Aaron Van den Heede, 2012. "Household Work Intensity and the Adequacy of Social Protection in the EU," Working Papers 1204, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    3. Martinelli, Luke & O'Neill, Kathryn, 2019. "A comparison of the fiscal and distributional effects of alternative basic income implementation modes across the EU28," EUROMOD Working Papers EM14/19, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    4. Luis Ayala & José María Arranz & Carlos García‐Serrano & Lucía Martínez‐Virto, 2021. "The effectiveness of minimum income benefits in poverty reduction in Spain," International Journal of Social Welfare, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(2), pages 152-169, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    convergence; CSB-MIPI; EU-SILC; European Union governance; harmonisation; Minimum income protection; Social Europe;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hdl:wpaper:1205. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Santiago Burone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csbuabe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.