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The social policies of the fifteen member states of the European Union have been re-deployed upwards to the European Union level, and downwards, through decentralization, to the local level. They are now managed through a method of open coordination. Notwithstanding a declared intent to safeguard the « European social model », the aim is a supple harmonization of national labor markets. Open coordination is inspired by the ideology of participatory management whose concepts and techniques provide the texture of democratic modernity. It generates the illusion that governing is an experimental science. As such, it blurs public debate and veils the power issues linked to the new and imposing bureaucratic-type machinery that it generates. Society’s most vulnerable parts are thus subordinated to the lifelessness of cold managerial practices.