Social or Highly Competitive Europe? EU Law Solution to Conflict of Social Security and Competition Law

Abstract

Since 1990s when liberalization and deregulation processes first opened the social security field to market forces, the EU competition law has had to cope with the situations of clash between values of social welfare and free competition. In the post-crisis period the European Union wants and needs to be more socially responsive, as the strengthening of social justice and social rights, the fight against poverty and social exclusion has become the key to political legitimacy of the European integration as well as of its Member States. A question hence arises how the call for a more social EU would cohabit with the free and undistorted competition. The paper tries to remedy on the fact that the EU so far has no accepted methodology of how to integrate public policy considerations in competition decisions. After sketching such a methodology based on the CJEU pre-Lisbon case law, the present analysis deals with the post-Lisbon developments inquiring whether the CJEU is paying now more consideration to social security measures.

Keywords: European Union, competition law, social security, exception