European Citizenship and Social Rights in Times of Crisis

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.