Staatsprojekt Europa

Abstract

This essay offers a discourse analytical study of the trajectory of the European Court of Justice's case law regarding the social rights of non-employed persons, which began in 1998 and has established its centrepieces in the meantime. The text aims at demonstrating that societal struggles turn into legal ones, once they enter the arena of European law. I argue in particular that before the backdrop of the crisis of neoliberal hegemony the Court of Justice integrates different forces into a new hegemonic legal project, which points towards a European social union and provides first evidence of a potential 'state project Europe'.