Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

In eastern Europe, for example, the Communist regimes after 1948 on the whole did not usually favour universal welfare systems—they did not need to, since they were at liberty to redistribute resources by force without spending scarce state funds on public services. Peasants, for instance, were frequently excluded from the social insurance and pension arrangements on political grounds. In western Europe only six countries—Belgium, Italy, Norway, Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany and the UK—introduced compulsory and universal unemployment insurance after 1945. Subsidized voluntary schemes remained in the Netherlands until 1949, in France through 1967, in Switzerland until the mid-1970s. In Catholic Europe long-established local and communal coverage against unemployment probably impeded the development of universal systems of insurance by reducing the need for them. In countries where inter-war unemployment had been especially traumatic—the UK, or Belgium—welfare spending was driven in part by the desire to maintain full or close to full employment. Where it had not been so significant—in France or Italy, for example—this was reflected in a rather different balance of priorities.