European Citizenship and Social Rights in Times of Crisis
TL;DR: The recent general elections in Italy, a country key for the stability and indeed the survival of the Euro-zone, have produced a situation of fragmentation and political instability that is both unprecedented and disquieting as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: European citizenship celebrated its twentieth anniversary during the most difficult and uncertain moment of the Union's crisis. The real economy has now been fully saturated by the financial crisis far beyond the borders of the Euro-Mediterranean area, with devastating social effects in those countries most affected. The prolonged vertical drop of the gross domestic product in Greece—the epicenter of the crisis—has been intertwined with a dramatic and unprecedented growth of levels of unemployment and social suffering in a vortex destructive to the point of validating the perception, now widespread not only within the bewildered public opinion of that unfortunate country, that the “rescue” of the Union has been based on a cure that is worse than the disease. The recent general elections in Italy, a country key for the stability and indeed the survival of the Euro-zone, have produced a situation of fragmentation and political instability that is both unprecedented and disquieting. Among the few elements of certainty in Italy can be found a widespread Euro-skepticism, if not an openly anti-European mood, that is also unprecedented in the history of the country's public opinion, which historically is among the most favorable towards a strengthening of the integration process. With the worsening of the economic and social crisis, the very tenacious confidence in Europe as a positive “external constraint” which has supported Italy's efforts towards reforms, commencing with its admission into the Euro-zone in the latter 1990s until the most recent experience of the technocratic government headed by Mario Monti, seems to have declined. Everywhere in Europe, a sense of frustration and distrust in recent years has grown against the Union and its frantically sought capacity to respond to the crisis without finding truly effective outcomes.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the rights constituted by social citizenship derive from a status positivus and a status socialis activus, expanding the time-honoured categories of Jellinek.
Abstract: Ever since the inauguration of European Union (EU) citizenship, elements of social citizenship have been on the agenda of European integration. European level social benefits were proposed early on, and demands for collective labour rights have followed suit. This paper uses the theoretical umbrella of transnational social citizenship in order to link transnational access to social benefits and collective labour rights. It promotes transnational rights as the best way to conceptualise EU social citizenship as an institution enabling the enjoyment of EU integration without being forced to forego social rights at other levels. Such a perspective sits well in a collection on EU citizenship and federalism, since it simultaneously challenges demands of renationalisation of social rights in the EU and pleas to reduce EU-level citizenship rights to a merely liberal dimension. Social citizenship as promoted here requires an interactive conceptualisation of regulatory and judicial powers at different levels of government as typical for federal systems.In linking citizenship with human rights the chapter highlights different statuses of citizens. It argues that the rights constituted by social citizenship derive from a status positivus and a status socialis activus, expanding the time-honoured categories of Jellinek. This concept is developed further by linking the notions of receptive solidarity to the status positivus and the notion of participative solidarity to the status socialis activus. In relation to European Union citizenship, it promotes a sustainable transnational social citizenship catering for receptive and participative solidarity. These ideas contrast with most current discourses on EU citizenship. The stress on social citizenship takes issue with a retreat to mere liberalist notions of EU-level citizenship, and the stress on rights takes issue with conceptualising EU citizenship as a community bond with obligations, downplaying the empowering potential of rights. The difficulty of conceptualising transnational social citizenship is, on the one hand, to avoid taking up the tune of populist discourses imagining those moving beyond state borders as a threat to national social citizenship and, on the other hand, to reject the legitimate fears of those remaining at home of creating rupture in the social fabric of Europe’s society. Promoting transnational social citizenship rights based on receptive and participative solidarity, the present paper suggests a way for avoiding these pitfalls.
53 citations
Cites background from "European Citizenship and Social Rig..."
...29 89 St Giubboni (n. 51), 942 90 Case C-341/05 [2007] ECR I-11767 91 Case C-438/05 International Transport Workers Federation [2007] ECR I-10779...
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TL;DR: The European Union is in troubled waters as mentioned in this paper and its original reliance on law as the object and agent of the integration project and on the economic constitution which the EMU, as accomplished by the Treaty of Maastricht, were expected to complete have proven to be unsustainable.
Abstract: The European Union is in troubled waters. Its original reliance on law as the object and agent of the integration project and on the “economic constitution” which the EMU, as accomplished by the Treaty of Maastricht, were expected to complete have proven to be unsustainable. Following the financial and the sovereign debt crises, the EMU, with its commitments to price stability and monetary politics, is perceived as a failed construction precisely because of its reliance on inflexible rules. The European crisis management seeks to compensate for these failures by means of regulatory machinery which disregards the European order of competences, dis-empowers national institutions, and burdens, in particular, Southern Europe with austerity measures; it establishes pan-European commitments to budgetary discipline and macroeconomic balancing. The ideal of a legal ordering of the European economy is thus abolished, while the economic and social prospects of these efforts seem gloomy and the Union’s political legitimacy becomes precarious. The present critical constellation is addressed in a fictitious dispute between Carl Schmitt and Jurgen Habermas, in which a number of Schmittian notions seem alarmingly realistic. The essay pleads for a more modest Europe committing itself to “unity in diversity”, the motto of the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty of 2003.
29 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to analyze the 2014 Belgian National Election Study to distinguish between the decision-making level for social policy, European social citizenship, harmonization, member-state solidarity and interpersonal solidarity.
Abstract: Although the notion of ‘Social Europe’ can refer to different principles and policy options, most research narrows down attitudes towards Social Europe to a unidimensional construct. In this study, we instead propose a multi-dimensional approach, and contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we elaborate the notion of ‘Social Europe’ conceptually, and distinguish between the decision-making level for social policy, European social citizenship, harmonization, member-state solidarity and interpersonal solidarity. Second, analysing the 2014 Belgian National Election Study by means of confirmatory factor analysis we evidence that citizens indeed have distinct attitudes towards the policy principles and instruments of Social Europe. Although these attitudinal dimensions are interrelated, they cannot be reduced to a single Social Europe factor, meaning that citizens differentiate in their attitudes between various aspects of Social Europe. In addition, our research indicates that member-state solidarity is the primary aspect of Social Europe in public opinion, whereas the feature that has received most scholarly attention in empirical research to date—the preferred decision-making level for social policy—cannot be considered as a key component of attitudes towards Social Europe. Third, we investigate whether citizens with different educational levels conceptualize Social Europe similarly using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicate that the attitudinal factor structure of Social Europe is largely equivalent among lower and higher-educated citizens.
23 citations
TL;DR: The European Union rides through troubled waters as discussed by the authors, with its original reliance on law as the object and agent of the integration project and on the economic constitution, which the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) expected to complete, have proven unsustainable.
Abstract: The European Union rides through troubled waters. Its original reliance on law as the object and agent of the integration project and on the “economic constitution,” which the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)—as accomplished by the Treaty of Maastricht— expected to complete, have proven unsustainable. Following the financial and sovereign debt crises, individuals perceive the EMU, with its commitments to price stability and monetary politics, as a failed construction precisely because of its reliance on inflexible rules. The European crisis management seeks to compensate for these failures by means of regulatory machinery which disregards the European order of competences, takes power from national institutions, and burdens—in particular—Southern Europe with austerity measures; it establishes pan-European commitments to budgetary discipline and macroeconomic balancing. This abolishes the ideal of a legal ordering of the European economy, while the economic and social prospects of these efforts appear gloomy and the Union's political legitimacy becomes precarious. A fictitious debate between Carl Schmitt and Jurgen Habermas addresses the present critical constellation, where a number of Schmittian notions seem alarmingly realistic. This essay pleads for a more modest Europe committing itself to “unity in diversity,” the motto of the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty of 2003.
21 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1999TL;DR: In this article, the European Contribution Conclusion: Multi-level Problem-Solving in Europe References Index is presented, where the authors propose a solution without boundary control for solving multi-level problem solving in Europe.
Abstract: 1. Political Democracy in a Capitalist Economy 2. Negative and Positive Integration 3. Regulatory Competition and Re-Regulation 4. National Solutions without Boundary Control 5. The European Contribution Conclusion: Multi-level Problem-Solving in Europe References Index
2,726 citations
"European Citizenship and Social Rig..." refers background in this paper
...102 The model of “postdemocratic executive federalism” 103 devised by the “reformed” European economic and monetary governance currently generates a dangerous and visibly precarious asymmetric 99 See Fritz W. Scharpf, The Double Asymmetry of European Integration –...
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...79 See, e.g., Fritz W. Scharpf, Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis and the Pre-emption of Democracy (LEQS Discussion Paper Series, Working Paper No. 35, 2011); Alexander Somek, The Social Question in a Transnational Context (LEQS Discussion Paper Series, Working Paper No. 39, 2011); Kaarlo Tuori, The European Financial Crisis: Constitutional Aspects and Implications (EUI Working Papers LAW, Paper No. 2012/28, 2012); Floris De Witte, EU Law, Politics, and the Social Question, 14 GERMAN L.J. 581 (2013)....
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...1 See Fritz W. Scharpf, Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis and the Pre-emption of Democracy (LEQS Paper No. 35, 2011)....
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...The asymmetry between negative and positive integration, classically analysed by Fritz Scharpf (1999), has never been thus evident in the history of the integration process....
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...The asymmetry between negative and positive integration, classically analyzed by Fritz Scharpf, 77 has never been so evident in the history of the integration process....
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Book•
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an economic and political account of the origins of the European Community (EC) and present an explanation based on historical analysis of the future relationship between nation-state and the European Union.
Abstract: This newly revised and updated second edition is the classic economic and political account of the origins of the European Community. On one level it is an original analysis of the forces which brought the EC together, on another it is an explanation based on historical analysis of the future relationship between nation-state and the European Union. Combining political with economic analysis, and based on extensive primary research in several countries, this book offers a challenging interpretation of the history of the western European state and European integration.
1,263 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss two options, closer co-operation and a combination of differentiated "framework directives" with the open method of co-ordination, to overcome the constitutional asymmetry between market efficiencies and policies promoting social protection and equality.
Abstract: European integration has created a constitutional asymmetry between policies promoting market efficiencies and policies promoting social protection and equality. National welfare states are legally and economically constrained by European rules of economic integration, liberalization and competition law, whereas efforts to adopt European social policies are politically impeded by the diversity of national welfare states, differing not only in levels of economic development and hence in their ability to pay for social transfers and services but, even more significantly, in their normative aspirations and institutional structures. In response, the ‘open method of coordination’ is now being applied in the social-policy field. It leaves effective policy choices at the national level, but tries to improve these through promoting common objectives and common indicators, and through comparative evaluations of national policy performance. These efforts are useful but cannot overcome the constitutional asymmetry. Hence there is reason to search for solutions which must have the character of European law in order to establish constitutional parity with the rules of European economic integration, but which also must be sufficiently differentiated to accommodate the existing diversity of national welfare regimes. The article discusses two such options, ‘closer co-operation’ and a combination of differentiated ‘framework directives’ with the open method of co-ordination.
819 citations
Book•
15 Jun 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the formation of the European Union, 1958-2004, and the creation of markets and politics are discussed. But the authors focus on the cases of the Defense, Telecommunications, and Football Industries.
Abstract: 1. The Dynamics of European Society 2. Constructing Markets and Politics: The Formation of the European Union, 1958-2004 3. Economic Transformation of Europe 4. The Creation of Markets: The Cases of the Defense, Telecommunications, and Football Industries 5. Who are the Europeans? 6. What is European Society? 7. The Structure of European Politics 8. Conclusions
477 citations