![]() ![]() In such a scenario the EU's role might be limited to being background support of national insurance systems, but it nevertheless involves the organization of solidarity at the EU level (Vandenbroucke, 2017a, 2019a). For yet other participants in these debates, the priority should be the development of European-wide risk sharing, for instance by means of re-insurance of national unemployment insurance schemes, providing budgetary assistance to national systems when they are in need. Some scholars argue that the EU should organize transnational interpersonal redistribution and thus become itself a key provider of redistribution, by means of a pan-European basic income (Van Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017). See Cantillon ( 2019), the reports by the European Minimum Income Network ( and their references to proposals by the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN). A European Directive on minimum income protection that would oblige all member states to provide decent incomes to the poor in their own country, is a well-known proposal to go beyond the existing model of soft guidance: norms set by the EU would become legal and binding. Is there a case, based on arguments of justice, for the EU to play a role in redistribution and insurance that goes beyond this acquis? In debates on the EU's social dimension, there is an array of proposals to that effect. ![]() Through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on social inclusion, the EU developed a soft (non-binding) normative framework for the member states' policies against poverty. However, through the coordination of social security entitlements for mobile European citizens and the legal enforcement of non-discrimination principles, the European Union (EU) plays a role in this domain which is far from trivial. Nation-states cherish their sovereignty in these sensitive areas. The redistribution of incomes from rich to poor and income insurance in the case of unemployment, retirement or illness are core functions of welfare states. Through the establishment of interstate insurance, it would be a true “insurance union.” It would engage in interstate redistribution, but there are no compelling reasons of justice for it to become a direct Provider of insurance or redistribution towards individual citizens. I argue that a “European Social Union” should be a Support and Norm-setter in the realm of insurance and redistribution. They need to be complemented by shared conceptions of domestic justice and a degree of moral cosmopolitanism. Conceptions of “background justice” have some purchase in a debate on the EU's role, but that purchase is limited. I review different accounts of justice for the EU and how they bear on the choice between these models of EU involvement. What role should the EU play in this domain? I examine the purchase of normative theorizing on social justice on this question, focusing on the contrast between three models of EU involvement: the EU as Support, which implies the sharing of resources through intergovernmental transfers the EU as Provider, which implies EU cross-border transfers towards individual citizens the EU as Norm-setter, which implies that the EU formulates normative policy ideals. Income redistribution and insurance are core functions of welfare states. ![]()
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