Europe’s Social Self: 'The Sickness Unto Death'

Abstract

This paper approaches the debates on the nature and position of social policy in the EU by putting them in the context of a discussion on Europe’s constitutional identity and its social self. In this way, the paper relates the current debates on the European Union’s social policy to other recent or anticipated constitutional developments. The paper also identifies a series of dilemmas and problems in Europe’s social policy the solution of which, it is argued, requires us to focus on the contested social identity of Europe. Are the different aspects of the social impact of European integration and the social policies of the Union based on some agreement regarding a core set of shared European social values? What rationale has commanded the different social developments involved in European integration? Does European integration need some criterion of distributive justice?

Keywords: EU law, EU social policy