The social face of Europe: mask or true identity?

Abstract

In the common space that the European Union has been striving to build since its Manifesto, the tension towards a cohesive, equal, and united community has been an affirmation of freedom and democracy, as well as the basis for economic development and an open and competitive market. The idea of tending to trace the profile of the social face of Europe is the aim of this contribution, which focuses on the analysis of the recognition of a shared European identity, and the analysis of the affirmation of rights and European integration of individual Member States on such sensitive and complex issues as social protection and the provision of social services. The aim is to understand whether the profile of the European social face has illuminated the path of the profiles of the individual national faces, or whether too often this beacon has remained extinguished, obscuring its significance in the constant and dialectic relationship between unity and multiplicity, between individual and collective. In fact, to understand whether this is merely a mask or a true European identity, whether the substratum exists for an identity aimed at the common goal of combating poverty and social marginalisation, recognising the right to social and housing assistance for people who do not have sufficient resources, so that they may be guaranteed a free, dignified and socially acceptable existence, as emerges from Article 34 of the Charter of Nizza