Alain Supiot

A Manifesto for Social Europe

The European Union is still far from having social legitimacy. The issue is indicative of a huge uncertainty about Social Europe. What is it? What are the principles of social justice behind it? In our view, a new social constitution of the European Union is needed. Political democratisation must be accompanied by the foundation of a social Europe. We argue that were the IGC to combine the Charter of The Fundamental Social Rights of Workers with the Maastricht Protocol on Social Policy, inserting both into the TEU, it would lay the legal foundations for a dynamic European social constitution; a Social Europe dedicated to the combating of social exclusion and the maintenance of solidarity.

Sur le principe de solidarité

The present period is marked by the projection on to a transnational level of the categories of thought which have carried the expansion of capitalism in each country which is called »developed«. Like all the juridical notions which have accompanied this development of industrial capitalism, solidarity was born and developed in a national juridical setting, and it is in this setting that it will therefore be necessary to situate it in order to understand its place in the juridical constructions of the providential state. But while the principle of solidarity is thus rooted in the experience of national legal systems, its future will depend on the fate reserved for it at an international level. The mechanisms of solidarity are today menaced by the destabilisation of the national settings where they have flourished. However, this setback in the cause of national solidarities could paradoxically lead to the affirmation of the principle of solidarity at the international level.