Regional integration processes can learn from the particularities of the European Union's social dimension, despite its apparent inconsistencies and sui generis form of development. The article provides a comprehensive retrospective overview of developments, and pays particular attention to the political and technical procedures adopted for progressing social policy. It argues that a regional integration process in a wide range of social fields has developed in the EU despite facing dissent and dilemmas for over 50 years. It claims that the EU now enjoys a working and workable apparatus of policies, practices and laws in a broad social dimension, that are not only far more extensive than first envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, but are also destined to expand further. In particular, the article moves beyond previous accounts in arguing that procedural complexity has been an intrinsic and creative part of the social dimension to European integration.
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