At the March 2000 European Council in Lisbon, the EU committed to taking steps “to make a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty”. At their 2005 Spring Summit in Brussels, EU leaders stressed that “it is essential to relaunch the Lisbon Strategy without delay and re-focus priorities on growth and employment”; they also reaffirmed that “social inclusion policy should be pursued by the Union and by Member States”. And one year later, in March 2006, they restated “the objective of the Partnership for growth and jobs that steps have to be taken to make a decisive impact on the reduction of poverty and social exclusion by 2010”. The Social Inclusion Process has a central role to play in this regard. This book has sought to provide an analysis of the challenges facing this Process and how it can be taken forward, in a context where the interdependence of the Union's economic, employment, social and environmental goals is to the fore. The importance of ensuring close links between the Social Protection and Social Inclusion Process and the revised Lisbon agenda on jobs and growth has been made clear, with active social policy expected to contribute in particular both to the reaffirmed social inclusion objectives and to economic and employment goals.

In this context, we have argued that the effectiveness of the Social Inclusion Process can be strengthened by improved policy analysis, monitoring and reporting on progress, and by ensuring that Member States’ National Action Plans on social inclusion (NAPs/inclusion) become more strategic, focused, and better mainstreamed into national policy making. This book has set out a range of concrete suggestions as to how to make progress in that direction. First, though, we began with a brief historical account of the development of EU cooperation in social policy since the Treaty of Rome and more particularly since the Lisbon European Council, which is necessary to understanding what has been achieved to date and the challenges currently facing the Social Inclusion Process.

EU cooperation in social policy

A great deal can be learned from the history of the development of EU cooperation in social policy: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana, 1980).