Il valore della solidarietà per un’Unione Europea funzionale

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate about European Solidarity, which is often invoked as something valuable in the public sphere, as well as in academic works. Solidarity is often conceived as a social function in the neo/post-functionalist strand of European Studies. Both the concept of solidarity and the notion of social function are however implicit and confused in the standing literature. This article attempts to clarify both ideas, by trying to show that solidarity is best understood as an etiological ‘proper function’ of any interdependent social group. As such, it is not only a descriptive feature that groups may happen to have, but a desirable feature with normative consequences: groups that lacks it need to foster it, less be doomed to wither away. The paper aims to show that the recent EU crises can be seen as stress tests that helpfully reveal the functional need for solidarity in political institutions.