Solidarity in the European Constitutional Imaginary: The Currency of an EU Social Value

Abstract

This thesis explores the unfolding of the idea of solidarity in the constitutional discourses on European integration. It analyses the levels at which solidarity situates in order to understand its constitutional status and ultimately Union’s self-representation as a socio-economic organisation. In particular, it looks at two areas, free movement of persons and economic and monetary union (EMU), to test whether redistribution, as a possible aspect of the EU value of solidarity, underwrites the EU’s practices and living experience.
To this end, this thesis uncovers the entanglement between law, economy, and politics and shows how the law allows but also limits the realisation of the EU as a community of solidarity. It argues that, while the pre-Maastricht constitution did not exhibit market fundamentalism, the post- Maastricht constitutional setting lacked coherence as to the role of solidarity across Union’s policy areas. Two different meanings of solidarity emerged. In the EMU, solidarity has not challenged the conception of the market as a central regulatory device for both individuals and Member States, thus assuming a market-restoring function; in the free movement area, instead, solidarity has shown the potential to open, although to a limited extent, a transnational space of redistribution.
This thesis concludes that the neoliberal turn of the Union’s political economy is not the inevitable result of a set of prescriptions written in the EU economic constitution and suggests that a transformative role for the law, and thus for solidarity, is possible as well as desirable.