Giddens's social investment state in Europe in 2026: what the EU data shows

When Anthony Giddens wrote The Third Way in 1998 he gave European social policy one of its most durable phrases. The welfare state, he argued, should become a "social investment state". Public money should build the stock of human capital, citizens should be encouraged to invest in their own skills, and equality should mean inclusion: real chances for everyone to improve their position.

Nearly thirty years on, the idea is everywhere in EU policy. The European Pillar of Social Rights, adopted in 2017, sets out 20 rights and principles, and its 2021 action plan fixed three targets for 2030: at least 78% of people aged 20 to 64 in work, 60% of adults in training every year, and 15 million fewer people at risk of poverty or social exclusion, 5 million of them children. In July 2026 the Commission published its review. It is a good moment to ask how social investment is doing, with numbers.

Employment: the target within reach

Eurostat's figures, released in April 2026, put the EU employment rate for people aged 20 to 64 at 76.1% in 2025, which is 197.7 million people and the highest share since the series began in 2009. It rose 0.3 points on 2024 and 0.8 points on 2023. The progressive think tank FEPS quotes a more recent reading of 76.3%. The 78% target is close.

The averages hide the people Giddens most wanted to include. Men's employment rate was 80.9% and women's 71.3%, a gap of 9.6 points. In Italy the gap is 19.1 points and only 58% of women aged 20 to 64 are in work. Romania and Greece follow. At the other end Estonia has almost no gap and Lithuanian women are slightly more likely to work than Lithuanian men. The countries that close the gap tend to be the ones that make work possible for parents, which brings us to the nursery.

Childcare: the clearest social investment

If any policy fits Giddens's definition, it is early childhood education. It develops children's capacities when they are most malleable and frees parents, mostly mothers, to work. The EU first set childcare targets, the Barcelona targets, in 2002, and member states adopted new ones in December 2022: by 2030, at least 45% of children under three should be in formal childcare or education.

The Commission's latest figures show 39.3% for 2024, 5.7 points short. The spread is enormous. The Netherlands reached 78.9%; Slovakia 5.1%. Spain is among the fast movers, with a rise of 15.3 points between 2015 and 2024. The Commission names high costs as a main barrier for disadvantaged families and points to free places or income-linked fees as the remedy.

This is social investment at its most effective. A place in a nursery is a service a family uses as a matter of course once it exists and is affordable. Nobody needs to fill in a training plan or choose among providers to benefit.

Adult learning: where the springboard sags

The third leg is lifelong learning, and here the gap is widest. The target is 60% of adults learning each year by 2030. FEPS puts the latest figure at 39.5%. Poverty reduction is also far behind its goal, and the Commission's own review calls progress uneven. Its July 2026 communication sets three priorities for the years ahead: affordability and the cost of living, using artificial intelligence for the future of work and shared prosperity, and reducing inequalities.

Adult learning depends on each person deciding to train, finding a course, getting time off and judging whether it will pay. The people who most need it, low-qualified workers in small firms, face every one of those hurdles at once. A springboard that you have to find, assemble and climb by yourself mostly helps the people who were already fit.

What the evidence says to a radical centre

Put the three results together and a pattern appears. Social investment works where the state builds something people can simply use: a nursery place, a school, a job centre that actually places people. It lags where it relies on individuals navigating a market of options alone.

That points to a position that takes something from each tradition. From the left: universal public services, and early childhood education above all, are a right and the strongest tool against inherited disadvantage, so the 45% childcare target should be treated as a floor. From the market-liberal side: social spending is an investment and should be judged by what it returns in work, earnings and independence, with results published programme by programme. And from neither: social policy should follow the life course, putting money where capacities are formed. That means the nursery first, then the mid-career moment when a worker changes job or sector.

For adult learning, it means designing the springboard so that it comes to the person. Training rights that sit in a personal account, credited automatically and portable across jobs, with paid time to use them and published results for every provider, turn a choice that only the confident make into a default that everyone has. Giddens gave Europe the goal. The data of 2026 shows that the delivery has to be as automatic as a nursery place.