Fraternity: a realistic starting point for solidarity in the EU

Solidarity in the EU. Unrealistic? Deviant Art/Zurp. Labelled for non-commercial reuse.Appeals for more solidarity within the European Union are ever more frequent in the European public discourse. Well-known philosopher and public intellectual Jürgen Habermas, for example, thinks that we may expect the EU’s constitutional process culminated in the Lisbon Treaty, with its emphasis on democratic procedures, to lead to some post-national form of ‘civic solidarity.’ The latter could in turn provide fertile ground to the legitimacy of the European project. As he reminds us in his latest volume, one of Europe’s key political questions is today to what extent ‘the populations of the Eurozone now find themselves in a historic setting which calls for ‘solidarity’.’

Solidarity is a popular concept also among social scientists studying the European Union. Frank Vandenbroucke, for example, advocates what he calls a ‘European Social Union’ as a way to embed pan-European solidarity in supranational institutions, alongside more traditional forms of domestic solidarity.

At the political level, the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, among others, has publicly supported these appeals for solidarity in Europe as a way to end its current predicament. The concept of solidarity has, finally, also been given some juridical recognition in the European Union: Title IV of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union explicitly mentions this value alongside a bundle of social rights which European citizens should expect.