Far from Integration: An Example of Disunity in the EU Social Policy - Parental Leave (2016)

Well-integrated economic policies, open market and advanced institutional frameworks are examples of successful EU integration process, nonetheless, EU still contains areas, such as social policy, which have been almost untouched by integration. This may be a serious issue because social policy influences economic growth, development and the level of employment. Therefore, the EU should search the most appropriate social policy and examine its integration. The thesis questions this integration of social policy on the apposite example of parental leave. Furthermore, it describes and examines the parental leave in three EU countries (UK, SE, CZ), which represent diverse welfare state models. Parental allowances are computed for five standardised families describing real-life situations. Also, they are compared to demonstrate the disunity and the specifics of the systems. The main contribution of the thesis resides in the unconventional approach of using the calculations of the benefits to directly investigate the integration of social policy.