Much has been going on in European welfare states in the last few decades, and much has been written on transformation processes and changing landscapes (see, for example, Gilbert, 2004; Taylor-Gooby, 2005; Seeleib-Kaiser, 2008; Palier, 2010; Hemerijck, 2013). Opinions differ on the role of European unification in this regard, but although the EU has no legislative competences in welfare and social policy, we cannot ignore the fact that we find increasing convergence across European welfare schemes, and that no domestic welfare scheme has been completely unaffected by processes at the European level. Despite still powerful and sometimes fiercely defended national social security schemes, Europeanisation has also reached the welfare sector (see, for example, Heidenreich and Zeitlin, 2009; Graziano et al, 2011).

What have so far attracted less attention in this context are the more small-scaled processes taking place at lower levels and apart from the ‘grand politics’ at the EU level. What about the everyday implementation processes and the actors who put the programmes into place in their daily routines? What role does the EU play here? This study set out to take a closer look at the implementation stages of labour market policies at the local level, and investigated the role of the ESF in this regard. The driving question was what the ESF ‘does’ to local labour market policies in a context where the local level is increasingly relevant in domestic welfare policies, and EU policies are more relevant at the implementation stage. The empirical findings show that there is not one single story of Europeanisation via the ESF, but that there are different patterns of local responses to the ‘Trojan Horse’ (Hübner, 2008; see Chapter 1, this book). This Conclusion now outlines the main argument and the research design once again, and then summarises the main findings. Furthermore, it reflects on the contributions and limitations of the study, and in a final step, embeds the results in a broader picture of European integration.

Main argument and summary of the findings

In the context of an ‘activation turn’ in many European welfare states, the local level has gained increasing relevance in recent decades.