Variety of European social models  Your compatriot, a Belgian professor André Sapir (2005) has divided the EU-15 countries into four groups based on their efficiency and equity. Efficiency here refers to sufficient incentive to work so that employment rates get relatively high. Equity 1 in these models means keeping the risk of poverty relatively low.
Despite the successes, there are three areas in which, although some progress was made, much work still needs to be done: the relatively high unemployment rate, the large share of public debt in GDP, and the high incidence of poverty. Helped by the high rate of growth, however, especially in the last three years, some improvement was evident in all these areas.