Abstract
The question as to whether there is currently something that can be called the crisis of social-democracy is arguable. Social-democracy and socialist parties are still the counterpart of Conservatives and Christian-democrats, sharing alternatively between government responsibilities at the national level as well as in the European Parliament. Nevertheless, the major transformation of the last 25 years, namely the acceleration of both globalization and Europeanization has upset the core of both the Social Democratic ideology and policies, which happens to be the central role of the Welfare State. Thus, socialist politicians have to face the hegemony of the neo-liberal ideology and the fundamentally liberal nature of the European project based on the single market. Besides, the ideological debate on the political meaning of choices made for the economic governance in Europe tends to be watered down by the genuine weakness of party politics in the EU institutional constellation. In this background, we analyze how the social-democratic movement developed at the European level.
