In search of a new European social model in the digital age. Twenty years after the Nice Charter, a counter-story

Abstract

In this paper I intend to reconstruct the European debate around the constituent processes and (failed) constitutionalization that have involved the Euro-Union institutions since the late nineties of the twentieth century. This process began with the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which could have been the start of a new European social model in the knowledge society, even more necessary in the face of changes in the digital society and private powers that govern it. Therefore, we can take advantage of three anniversaries – the eightieth anniversary of the “Ventotene Manifesto” (1941), the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Ursula Hirschmann (1913-1991), the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Nice/Strasbourg Charter of Fundamental Rights of EU (2000) – to propose a counter-history of the last twenty years of the continental integration process. There’s a need to think about social rights and pan-European solidarity in the face of post-pandemic challenges and the acceleration of technological and digital innovations, starting with a necessary continental welfare based on universal guarantees of social protection, such as basic income serving as a ius existentiae in the digital age.