WELFARE STATE AS ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL FACTORS DRIVING POST-WAR EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS

Abstract

The modern welfare state, as it is understood today, has become a topical issue in many Western European countries, especially after the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s and World War II, the most destructive armed conflict in the history of humanity. The presented study offers several perspectives on the welfare state model in the Western European environment at the beginning of the process of European integration. Although after the war, influential Western European politicians have accepted the importance of the welfare state, there is no single welfare state model in Europe. The study has no ambition to provide a detailed analysis of social models in Europe. It deals with several models of the welfare state, paying particular attention to Germany and France, whose relations became the engine of the integration process in Europe, which was, from the start, both a political and an economic project.