Yesterday the discussion of how to modernize European welfare states took place in Paris. My two cents was on social investment seen in a life course perspective arguing that policies can help develop, strengthen, maintain and rehabilitate human’s functional capacities and thus better meet life’s events and transitions and its social and economic problems. Childcare and active labor market policies are chief social investment policies, but drawing on Danish experiences my examples concerned the unusual suspects of housing, minimum incomes, sickness benefits, disability pensions and long term care. After another five such workshops involving ministries, scholars, and NGO’s the organizers will decide whether and how to take such discussions out of the beautiful Jean Monnel Salle into the broader French polity and society. Bonne chance! For more on the event and initiative see France Strategie.