The European Pillar of Social Rights: A Dangerous Distraction?

Abstract

The European Pillar of Social Rights set out to reaffirm a European promise of universal welfare and prosperity as a remedy for a perceived crisis of legitimacy of the EU. This paper argues that the Pillar does not actually state legally binding rights and that ist name is therefore misleading. However, case-law of the European Court of Justice indicates that the Pillar could be used as a tool for the interpretation, in particular, of the – legally binding – Charta of Fundamental Rights, potentially widening the scope of application of the latter. This in turn, the article argues, might undermine the very objective the Pillar set out to reach – improving the EU‘s appeal to and acceptance by its citizens – by way of gradually increasing democratic deficits of the European Union while insufficiently targeting social ones. crisis of legitimacy, source of interpretation, democratic deficit, social deficit