Being a structural point of all societies, public welfare and attention to the poor and ill has always been a main problem for institutional power. The different ways in which every country tried to solve the problems related to well-being and people's health has varied over the years according to ideological contexts and financial resources. Yet, apart from the particularities from each State, there have been some moments in which all Europe has mobilised in search of answers for basically identical problems. For this reason, it is possible to individualise three great stages in European history that were, at the same time, moments of rupture of current social support systems and of modernisation of health and social solidarity structures. The first stage is the one of the decline of the feudal world and formation of Europe. The second one is the situation which arose from discoveries and economic globalisation. The third one occurred during the process of European industrialisation and ended up in the creation of the providence-State. The current collapse of the frontiers, the social problems arisen from the political de-structurization of Eastern Europe and the economic globalisation force us to rethink social policies nowadays. This means that Europe is living a new moment of rupture and transformation of both health and public welfare policies.
. The network is coordinated by the University of Evora and supported by the European Commission, within the framework of the Socrates Programme (Erasmus Thematic Networks). It also receives funding from the Portuguese Government, and collaborates with other institutions: the Milbank Memorial Fund, the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Compostela Group of Universities.