Social policy has long been a contested area for European institutions, member states, their governments and their electorates. While the UK's withdrawal negotiations focussed primarily on trade, arguably social issues played a significant role in persuading a majority of electors in the UK to vote leave in the 2016 referendum on Europe, as well as being a determining factor in the decision of many of those who voted to remain.

What Brexit means for EU and UK social policy draws on a range of disciplinary, conceptual and theoretical approaches to analyse and understand the complex interconnections between social policy formation, implementation and governance at European and national levels. The book highlights the social issues, debates and policy challenges facing Europe at different stages in its development over the 60 years since the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957.

The European Union (EU), as it is known since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, has had to accommodate an ever greater diversity of welfare arrangements. Member states have sought to deal collectively with the social implications of population ageing, technological change, global financial, eurozone and refugee crises, and the fallout from international conflicts. With Brexit, arguably, as one of the greatest challenges in the EU's history, this book seeks to understand what the results of the 2016 referendum might mean for EU and UK social policy, by exploring five key questions:

• • what is meant by social policy and, more specifically, by European social policy;

• • why the EEC had a social dimension and what its characteristics were;

• • how the concept of European social policy evolved and changed during the 45 years of the UK's membership;

• • how social policy became an issue in the 2016 referendum campaign and the withdrawal negotiations;

• • what impact Brexit might have on the future development of social policies at EU and national levels.

The book adopts a thematic and chronological approach in undertaking a systematic review of the debates surrounding the social dimension and its place in the European project. It scrutinises evidence in support of claims that successive UK governments have both hindered and encouraged social policy development within the EU, acknowledging that the ambivalent role played by the UK makes it difficult to predict the medium and longer term effects of the Brexit vote for EU and UK social policy.