The Post-Brexit Declaration on Social Quality in Europe

Abstract

Twenty years ago, at a public ceremony in Amsterdam, a group of European academics made a solemn declaration on the future of the European Union (EU). Eventually over 1000 scholars and policy makers signed the Amsterdam Declaration on the Social Quality of Europe and it was translated into sixteen languages. The main intention behind the declaration was to remind policy makers and citizens about the unique nature of the western European model of development, comprising aspirations for economic growth, competitiveness and social justice. The risk being warned against was that, in the process of Economic and Monetary Union, the politics of integration would neglect what was then labelled the ‘social dimension’ and, among other far-reaching consequences, this would lead to a loss of legitimacy for the whole European project. As the Comité des Sages put it, bluntly, in 1996, ‘Europe will be a Europe for everyone, for all its citizens, or it will be nothing’.