The Contentious Politics of Hospitality: Intra‐EU Mobility and Social Rights

• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Date: 01 November 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12209

The Contentious Politics of Hospitality:

Intra-EU Mobility and Social Rights

Maurizio Ferrera*

Abstract: Intra-Eu mobility has become increasingly contested. Despite empirical evidence

showing that migrants are not a burden for the receiving countries, a growing number of voters

think that nationals should have priority in terms of jobs and welfare. In a realist perspective,

this “nativist”turn cannot be ignored, as it might undermine the very idea of EU citizenship.

While nondiscrimination, as enshrined in the Treaties, should certainly remain the first order

principle to defend free movement from a legal and normative point of view, in the present

predicament it might be reasonable to complement it with the less demanding principle of

“hospitality”. Practically, this would mean to give back to Member States a modicum of

autonomy in filtering the access to social benefits for inactive or non-resident persons.

I Introduction

The intra-EU mobility of workers/persons, and in particular the latter’s access to the so-

cial protection systems of the receiving countries, has become a highly contentious and

polarising issue at both the na tional and supranational levels. Its normative basis, i.e.

the principle of non-discrimination, has lost its symbolic appeal and political purchase

among vast sectors of public opinion, feeding Eurosceptic orientations. The already

preoccupying scenario of a ‘Fortress Europe’, closed vis-à-vis the outside, risks being su-

perseded by an even more alarming prospect, i.e. the EU’s regress into a ‘fortress of for-

tresses’, crossed by internal fences hindering free movement and barring access to

national social protection schemes. Such prospect is alarming in cultural and economic

terms, but even more so in political terms. No territorial collectivity—and definitely not

a liberal democratic one—can survive and prosper without internal openness,

underpinned by solidaristic norms, institutions and dispositions.

Solidarity is a contested concept, but its prime meaning is relatively straightforward: it

connotes a specific trait of social collectivities, that is, a high degree of ‘fusion’or internal

unity, cohesion and commonality of purpose (the noun ‘solidarity’comes from the Latin

solidus,afirm and compact body). In this basic, ‘realist’sense, solidarity must be consid-

ered—first and foremost—as a political good, i.e. a state of affairs which serves the key

purpose of facilitating social cooperation, containing conflicts and sustaining generalised

compliance within a spatially demarcated community. Just like security and peace,

organised solidarity is a necessary condition for a stable and effective functioning ofboth

the market and democracy and for mediating their inevitable tensions. The current polit-

ical predicament of the EU can partly be explained by the weak institutionalisation of a

pan-European solidarity, capable of buttressing the ‘solidity’(and thus the persistence

and stability) of the Union as such.

* Professore Ordinario,Universitá degli Studi di Milano, Italy.

European LawJournal, Vol. 22, No. 6, November 2016, pp.791–805.

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