SSGIs and solidarity: constitutive elements of the EU's social market economy?

This chapter argues that the developing legal framework for SSGIs represents a particularly powerful catalyst for realigning the constitutional relationship between economic and social values in the EU as part of an evolving social market economy for the purposes of Article 3(3) TEU. In particular, growing political consensus in favour of a holistic approach to the issues relating to SSGI, coupled with the increasing receptiveness in EU law after the Treaty of Lisbon 2009 to a more ‘social’ orientation and the fragmentation of legal boundaries and methodologies, invite analysis of how those trends might be harnessed at law. This chapter proposes that the concept of solidarity, referred to frequently by the Treaties and the CRFEU, is a credible general principle of constitutional status in EU law for that purpose. Solidarity, it is argued, is an activator that requires a joint legal responsibility across purportedly hard-line boundaries of competence between different actors (EU institutions, national and subnational agencies) to secure effective SSGIs in an EU society that values and protects citizenship and social inclusion.