This book provides the first comprehensive analyses of the challenges all European welfare systems have been facing since 2007, combining in-depth country-based studies and comparative chapters. It identifies four main challenges for European welfare systems: 1) the economic and financial crisis, 2) demographic change, 3) the balance between avoiding risks and opening up opportunities in social policy, and 4) legitimacy. It shows that European welfare systems tend to face the same challenges but in different ways and that, accordingly, their responses to those challenges differ...