Since the end of World War II, social justice in Europen societies has been based upon the tacit agreement that state-designed mechanisms had to provide everyone 'from womb to tomb' with security (see e.g. Shonfield, 1982). While the feasibility of this social contract has been ensured by rapid growth until the mid-1970s, the slow-down that European nations have experienced since then, along with the rise of mass unemployment in the 1980s, has led to its unravelling.