Policy-making within the multi-state polity of the European Union is an intricate affair. Given heterogeneous policy legacies in the member states as well asthe diverse preferences of national governments and other domestic actors, one-size-fits-all solutions are often neither politically feasible nor normatively desirable. A certain amount of flexibility and variation is thus needed in order to find solutions that are applicable to all member states. In this context, recent EU policies follow a new regulatory method based oncompulsory minimum standards, possibilities for derogations and non-binding recommendations, which tries to combine both ‘community and autonomy’ (Scharpf 1994). However, is a flexible governance style necessarily a good thing? Could it even be a dangerous development? Focusing on the field of EU social policy, we offer the first in-depth survey of voluntarist EU policies as set forth in different EU Directives, on the basis of empirical research into the impact of such steering efforts in the EU's multi-level system.

EU social policy: a successful combination of community and autonomy, or potentially dangerous voluntarism?

EU social policy is confronted with a ‘regulatory conundrum’ (Rhodes 1995). The disparate social systems and standards of the member states do not allow (at least in any practical way) for detailed harmonisation in the sense of simply equalising social standards via EU law ‘from above’. At the same time, liberalisation of the economy in the internal market has increased competitive pressures on the national systems of social and labour law.