For quite some time now, the EU Member States have tried to mold the EU into a socially more acceptable form. This has largely remained big words and solemn declarations, but the Lisbon Treaty establishes the EU as a social market economy.

In the Lisbon Treaty, the EU committed itself to the creation of a European "social market economy". But the European legislation that would be required to promote this goal still depends on qualified majorities in the Council and will therefore easily be blocked by the veto of member states preferring a "liberal market economy", argues the author of this new analysis within the SIEPS research project Social Europe.