Plaidoyer for a Social Europe

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Abstract‘It is with great sadness that his many friends learned of the passing of Fernando Vasquez, on 16 July 2020, in Porto. I met Fernando Vasquez some thirty years ago, at a time when, together with Jean‐Jacques Paris, another friend who recently passed away, and under the direction of Odile Quintin in DG V of the European Commission, he was working on building a Social Europe. That was before the European Union failed as a post‐liberal orthodoxy, driving along all Member States, in a race to the lowest social and fiscal bidder. As Frédéric Turlan reminds us, in a tribute published in the recent issue of Liaisons sociales Europe, n. 502, 23 July‐2 September 2020, Fernando Vasquez witnessed with lucidity this backsliding which has heavily contributed to the current disconnection between citizens and the European project, but it did not prevent him from relentlessly striving for more justice in the European Union. These efforts, his diagnosis, without complacency, of the current state of the Union and his most recent suggestions for ensuring both social and economic convergence under the aegis of solidarity, are retraced in his contribution to the Conference ‘Revisiting solidarity in Europe’, which was held on 18 and 19 June 2018 at the Collège de France in Paris. To honour his memory and as a testament to his commitment to a certain idea(l) of Europe, one which is true to its principles of democracy and social justice, here is the text of his contribution, a call, and his last plaidoyer, for a social Europe.’Alain Supiot, Emeritus Professor at the Collège de France in Paris.