The Social State Based on the Rule of Law in the Europe of Rights

2012

Chapter 8 shows how the idea of the social State under the rule of law has been linked to the European Union since its inception. The founding fathers (Adenaeur, de Gasperi, Monet, Schuman) set the principles of dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity as a way of freeing European citizens from fear, misery and misfortune. Welfare is, above all, a state of justice that defines the threshold between indecency and well-being and affirms that human development is not (only) economic growth. Jacques Maritain, whose influence on the European Union is well known, proclaimed the order that contains the three principles of the social state: the primacy of the person, the priority of civil society …