Social Europe Is A Myth

The progressive discourse on Europe is full of taboos and myths. Entering these debates requires caution. It’s a challenge to clearly articulate the social consequences of European integration and, in so doing, come into conflict with the myth of ‘Social Europe’.

This Social Europe may be empirical or merely anticipated. In any case, you would probably agree with me that the term does not really describe the condition of the European Union. Too much has happened over the past decade or two. From the European Court of Justice (ECJ) intervening in the right to industrial action (the Viking and Laval cases), the subjugation of public infrastructure sectors to European competition law, through to the troika’s policy of social bulldozing in the south of the continent. The EU’s gender equality policy, frequently and not unreasonably described as an example of a desirable social EU policy, is scarcely enough to make up for all of this.