Social Europe as a Multilevel Governance: The Italian Perspective

Abstract

The article deals with history and historiography of Social Europe, understood as integra-tion of social forces (mainly the trade-unions) of the different European countries. The communitarian dimension of trade-unionism, indeed, is a topic more and more considered by historians. Starting from the first attempts of Europeanization of social dynamics in the ‘50s, the article follows the development of Social Europe trough its different stages: the po-litical approach to the “social affairs” in 1957-1964; the spreading of the need to establish an European trade-union movement; the “long tunnel” of 1974-1984; the renewed trade-unionist awareness which made emerge a “Social Europe”; the social protocols annexed to the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam. The article underlines the scarce capacity for ini-tiative of an articulated European trade-union representation, but points out that social di-mension has always accompanied the success of the stages for the European unification and the reasons of its expansion.