From EU-Rescue to EU-Trap

Due to the Bismarckian imprint and the Southern European character of the Italian welfare regime, Italian employment and social policies have traditionally shown a marked misfit with the emerging European social policy structure. In the last two decades, consequent adaptational pressures have led to the adoption of various reforms prompted by external constraints and especially European inputs. By focusing on policy development and political dynamics in the fields of pensions and employment policy, the paper identifies three phases between 1990 and 2012. The most recent phase of national emergency since 2009 has allowed Italian policy makers to adopt two major pensions and employment policy reforms. Unlike in the past, these have been pushed through by political actors despite labor union reluctance and opposition and imposed on an increasingly Euro-skeptical Italian population by making reference to Brussels. The paper argues that European constraints recently turned into sufficient conditions for social reforms in Italy while national actor’s leverage in the field significantly declined.