The Competence that Creeped: A Systematic Content Analysis of EU Social Policy Case Law and Competence Creep

Sammanfattning

This thesis is about how the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has propelled competence creep forward in the European Union by consistently applying a broad interpretation of EU law to social policy court rulings. To derive these results, 180 social policy cases were analyzed and coded using systematic content analysis, transforming qualitative data into quantifiable data. The analysis is used to categorize and identify patterns that test the presence of competence creep and judicially constructed competence expansion over time, while also preserving the nuances of each of the selected cases. In this study, the case selection consists of social policy rulings produced by the CJEU. As a controversial area of shared competences in the EU, social policy will be analyzed ranging from EU jurisprudence under the Treaty of Rome (1957) to the Lisbon Treaty (2009). The analysis provides empirical support for the presence of competence creep over time and confirms the predominance of cases interpreted to favor the EU and an expansion of EU law in the area of social policy.