Historiography of the French social security system

The French system of social security, as it was established after the Second World War, is one of the European ''welfare states''. Some of its core elements, such as coordination of pension schemes, healthcare programs, and minimum wage, according to many researches, could lay the basis for a potential ''European social model''. The today's French system of social protection undergoes multiple problems because of the Eurozone financial crisis, social instability, the uncertain future path of government policy, and needs to be revised. The contemporary research provides a comprehensive analysis of French social policy's features and its advantages and inconveniences so as to evaluate its capacity of adaptation to the new economic and social challenges of the European integration process. Interdisciplinary approaches are widely used by the French school of social policy studies taken from such fields as administrative law, social anthropology, management, regulation, micro- and macro-economics, historiography, and sociology. A considerable part of French researches and institutions quoted in the article point out that there is an increased interaction between the ''European social model'' and national social policies of its member states. They argue that the French government has to take a more active part in the EU decision-making process, if it still wants to preserve the ''values of the Enlightenment'' as a symbol of the unified Europe. Specifically, the French sociologist J.-C. Barbier condemns the classification of European ''welfare states'' as according to G. Esping-Andersen, and argues that French social policy distinguishes itself from other national models, due to its original social protection system which unites the elements of ''welfare state'', social security, and social issue. Also, the CNRS researcher B. Palier considers the French ''securite sociale'' as an overall civil value aimed to preserve the indivisibility of the Republic. On the opposite, other pro-European researchers, e.g., J. Pisani-Ferry, criticize the inefficiency of the French social model and claims a better cooperation with the ''European Social Dimension''. Most of the researchers exploring the sustainability of the French social system believe that a pan-European coordination in the field of social policy in short and middle term may not be possible, as social policy relates to the national competence and follows economic and financial cycles of the country. An important feature in comparison with other European states is that the French governmental research institutions, such as the General Commission for strategy and economic foresight, and the Office of legal and administrative information, etc., also contribute strongly to the debate on the viability of the national security system.

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