Social Rights in Crisis: Any Role for the Court of Justice of the EU?

Eu anti-crisis measures had a profound impact on the fabric of the European integration process, engendering systemic conflicts with some of its foundational elements. This chapter looks at the capacity of the system to deal with these conflicts in order to avoid that they may shake its foundations and further weaken the legitimacy of the integration process. In particular, the paper focuses on the role that the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘the Court’) has been able, and/or willing, to play when anti-crisis measures encroach upon fundamental social rights and, more in general, the balance between the social and the economic dimensions within the EU legal order. The first part looks at the departure from the rule of law in the context of bailout programmes devised to assist Member States that have been hard hit by the crisis. The second part looks at the impact of anti-crisis measures on social rights, examining some of the defining features of the conditions attached to financial assistance packages. The third and fourth parts turn to the Court, critically analysing its role in the new European economic governance and its capacity to preserve some of the foundational elements of the EU legal order.