Redistributive policies convey resources to specific groups or individuals at the expense of other groups or individuals. This in turn gives rise to a basic economic cleavage which pitches those who finance policy measures against those who benefit from them – the ‘haves’ vs. the ‘have-nots’ – and makes the resolution of conflicts the chief problem facing European policy-makers in redistributive policy. The conflicting interests in regional and social policy, between those who finance a measure and those who benefit from it, vary according to scope and mode. In regional policy, for example, the European Union pursues redistributive objectives to narrow spatial disparities, and successive reforms have been passed enabling the Commission to target financial aid to the poorest regions within the EU (Mazey 1996). In European social policy, the question is whether benefits should be redistributed between classes and age groups, and in European labour-relations policy, to what extent workers should be granted rights such as access to information or co-decision-making vis-à-vis management.

Beyond this divide, disputes between European and national actors over competences are pronounced in both policy areas. Where the Commission works to secure rights enabling it to target resources, member-state governments defend those same rights vehemently precisely because the power to distribute funds – to regions and local authorities (regional policy), individuals or groups (social policy) – constitutes an important source of electoral legitimation.