Social Rights in the face of the Crisis. Reflections on the Spanish Case

Abstract

Spain and many European countries are going through a critical stage that endangers the achievements of civilization and protection of social rights which are the standard of the constitutionalism of the social-democratic systems after the Second World War. The emergence of the economic and financial crisis and its impact on Member States, especially in regard to the realization of the rights and, in particular, the social ones, impose a critical reflection since on the European scene there is not a shared concept. In the Spanish social and democratic rule of law, many of the social rights are placed in Chapter III of Title I as guiding principles of social and economic policy. The analysis of this regulatory body of the Constitution is problematic insofar as it raises the problem of redirecting the content of such rules to legal structures in order to ensure guarantee levels which approximate them to fundamental rights within the framework of a European model of social democracy. The problem of the welfare state (in Spain and other European countries) affects the quality of representative democracy.