During the 1980s, the conservative rhetoric which prevailed in the United States and Great Britain, and with less vigour in Canada, fuelled speculations regarding a crisis of the Welfare State. In the current context of globalization, it is important to know whether this North American or Anglo-Saxon drift is also occurring in Europe, which would thereby be a site of a phenomenon of the convergence of social protection systems, a convergence which would entail a fundamental change in the coherence underlying social protection systems in Europe. This article compares Welfare States, presents recent developments in Anglo-Saxon countries and continental Europe, and focuses more particularly on the issue of workfare, concluding that while widespread doubts have been raised, the trajectories of individual countries remain rooted in models and institutions already in place.