EU Law, Politics, and the Social Question

Abstract

This contribution analyzes how the process of European integration has affected the capacity of citizens to collectively decide on the “social question,” that is, on the distribution of resources and life chances between individuals in a society. It starts by highlighting the pivotal role of “the political” in any answer to such question (B); generally traces the demise of this role under the pressures of globalization, legal integration, and the sovereign debt crisis (C); and suggests that law has been an important instrument for the lifting of the social question outside the scope of political contestation. This contribution then briefly catalogues different alternatives that can serve to reappropriate the social question within the realm of politics, argues that our priority should lie in the formation of a transnational public sphere, and suggests that EU law can, in several ways, contribute towards, if not fully deliver, a return of authorship and ownership about how societies function to the citizen (D).