Social services in the EU legal system: balancing competition and the protection of national-specific public interests

This paper investigates the reorientation processes implemented by public authorities in EU Member States with regards to social services management. The paper focuses on welfare services, although a wider range of social services (health, education, work, social security) are taken into account where relevant. Current reorientation involves a shift in welfare policies, from the traditional approach based on solidarity, towards a view that emphasizes economic relevance of social services. As a result, organization and management of social services are subject to free competition, and might therefore potentially collide with the non-economic peculiarities of social services; services where personal and human factors have a major relevance and impact, both on their performance and on their legal denomination. Such reorientation has triggered a not yet concluded process characterized by the tentative balance of opposing needs: the needs of social services users and the need for free competition between the agencies supplying such services.