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European welfare state became well known in all over the world in the second part of the 20th century for its social justice, social solidarity and social protection ideas. European Union integration and globalisation processes contained social affairs almost from the very beginning. At the start up point of the European community, the qualities of social equality, gender equality, better working conditions, and minimum living standard were the most important ones; up to 1970s, the main countries of EU managed to implement them quite well. However, the European welfare systems have been affected negatively by 2 key factors: the EU expansion and worldwide globalisation processes. In the last decade of the 20th century, phenomena like falling birth rates, increasing average life expectancy, population migration processes, growing income inequality and the existing social exclusion started to appear. It became obvious that the need to have a similar social system in all member states is unavoidable. In the context of the subject related to uniting the EU social system, the article is dedicated to analysis of European Union's social policy. The analysis is divided into several parts: firstly, the process of formation of a common social policy in the EU is investigated, trying to find the answer to the following question: compared to the achievements of the EU in the fields such as a common market and free trade, a common customs system, the monetary union, and free movement of people, what is the status of forming a common social policy of the EU? Secondly, the paper briefly summarises academic works on social policy modelling, trying to make a conclusion what difficult challenge it is to form a single common social policy of the European Union. Finally, the article provides perspectives of a European Social policy based on investigations performed. The author of the paper discovers that the social policy applied in the EU is a term with wide understanding and context, as such social policy as common and united in the entire EU is still undergoing formation and is currently in the initial stage only. The European social policy faces the challenge of a big variety of social systems in the EU member states. At least four different social policy models are summarised from the analysis: the Conservative -- Bismarkian -- Continental model, the Social Democratic -- Scandinavian -- Northern, the Mediterranean -- Southern and the East European social policy model. Even if concluding that for a union having 27 member states, it is already a positive result to have only 4 different social policy models, it must be underlined that these four models are much too variegated to expect them to be united and easily developed on similar principles. The article provides three perspective development ways of the EU's social policy. The first way is to establish common EU standards, directives and regulations for all the EU member states and make it obligatory to adopt them into national regulation. The second pessimistic scenario is based on no changes, remaining only with the Open Method of Coordination of social indicators in EU member states, while the third development perspective is much more attractive: to unite EU social policies by dedicating the process to some independent European Union social insurance institution or social affairs agency, and have common legislation, social programmes, rules and laws related to EU social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process of interests' representation in the EU governance system at the subnational level. The evaluation of this process is based on the case study of preparation of European Constitution during the Convention on the Future of Europe and the following EU Intergovernmental conference (IGC). The article analyses how the representatives of the Committee of the Regions with status of observers in the Convention, and the representatives of subnational level institutions defined and defended their interests and aims that emerged from Maastricht 'regional agenda'. This paper also makes attempts to draw some conclusions: which of the theoretical approaches -- neofunctionalism, intergovermentalism, or multilevel governance is the most appropriate when examining the subnational level impact on EU management processes. The main findings of this article state that relative success of subnational level interests' representation during the process of preparation of European Constitution was determined by several factors. Firstly, the favourable political environment and the openness of EU Member States to the questiona at subnational level. Secondly, the representation at subnational level was clearly mobilised. And thirdly, we can identify the existence of subnational interests' representation leader. This role was clearly assumed by Committee of the Regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]