An answer to the crisis? The social dimension of the European Economic Community in the 1970s.

Some authors who studied the History of European Integration indicated the period of the 1970s as the birth of the European Social Policy or as the period of time when the Community took concrete actions towards the achievement of various social goals. It is, however, inefficient to study the social integration of the EEC solely within the framework of these 10 years. Since the early years of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Six founding countries, the High Authority, and the organizations of the trade unions took steps towards the creation of Social Europe that we have today in the European Union. Nevertheless, the importance of the 1970s is the combination of internal and external events, from the social movements of 1968 in Western Europe to the oil crisis of 1973, from the reform of the European Social Fund in 1971 to the adoption of the first European social action program in 1974.