The ‘Europeanisation’ of Social Exclusion: British Adaptation to EU Co-Ordination

The Labour government came to power in 1997 pledging to tackle social exclusion and to end child poverty within a generation. The European Union has also committed to making a decisive impact on poverty and social exclusion within the framework of the Lisbon Strategy of economic and social policy reform. To this end, the EU has adopted an ‘open method of co-ordination’ intended to stimulate reflection, and to promote action, on member states' policies and strategies to tackle social exclusion. The aim of this article is to analyse and assess this attempt to ‘Europeanise’ policy-making in the United Kingdom (including the devolved institutions) in the field of social exclusion.