{"id":1082,"date":"2026-02-11T17:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2026-02-11T17:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T15:54:16","slug":"social-solidarity-and-justice-principles-in-the-european-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/2026\/02\/11\/social-solidarity-and-justice-principles-in-the-european-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Social solidarity and justice principles in the European Union"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recent study by Irina Ciornei (TransDeM-UAB)<\/strong> examines how justice principles<\/strong> shape public support for EU-level social policies<\/strong>\u2014an often overlooked mechanism in the literature. Using TESS (2016)<\/strong> data from 13 European countries<\/strong>, the study analyses support for a uniform EU welfare system<\/strong> and for EU schemes on unemployment, pensions, and health care<\/strong>. The findings show that equality and need<\/strong> are the strongest predictors of support, while differences across welfare regimes play a limited role; instead, national context<\/strong> conditions how citizens apply their justice beliefs to supranational solidarity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The article starts from a puzzle in the Social Europe<\/strong> debate: despite growing scholarly attention to what drives support for EU-level welfare policies<\/strong>, we still know relatively little about the normative yardsticks<\/strong> citizens use when deciding what \u201cfair\u201d supranational solidarity should look like. The central question is therefore: do distributive justice principles structure support for EU social solidarity, and if so, which ones matter most across different welfare domains?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To answer this, Zs\u00f3fia S. Ign\u00e1cz and Irina Ciornei (TransDeM-UAB)<\/strong> develop a framework centred on the three classic distributive justice principles\u2014equality, need, and equity<\/strong>\u2014and test how these translate into preferences for a multidimensional<\/strong> set of EU welfare proposals: equal access to health care<\/strong>, decent living standards for the elderly<\/strong>, support for the unemployed<\/strong>, and even a hypothetical uniform European welfare state<\/strong>. Empirically, they rely on the TESS (2016)<\/strong> survey across 13 European countries<\/strong>, modelling both individual-level predictors (including identity and ideology) and national context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their main finding is straightforward but consequential: equality and need<\/strong> emerge as the strongest and most consistent predictors<\/strong> of support for EU solidaristic policies, outperforming many \u201cusual suspects\u201d in the literature once controls are included. By contrast, equity<\/strong> (merit\/contribution) plays a weak or non-significant role overall, with only limited domain-specific exceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the paper shows that differences between welfare regime types<\/strong> explain relatively little of the variation in how justice principles operate. Instead, country-specific contexts<\/strong>\u2014especially economic conditions\u2014seem to shape how citizens apply<\/em> their justice beliefs when endorsing supranational solidarity. The broader contribution is to reframe EU social policy attitudes as not only interest- or identity-driven, but also deeply anchored in fairness conceptions<\/strong> about what Europeans owe each other across borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zs\u00f3fia S. Ign\u00e1cz, Irina Ciornei; Social solidarity and justice principles in the European Union. European Societies<\/em><\/em> 2026; doi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1162\/EUSO.a.88<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper is available in open access. 

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent study by Irina Ciornei (TransDeM-UAB) examines how justice principles shape public support for EU-level social policies\u2014an often overlooked mechanism in the literature. Using TESS (2016) data from 13 European countries, the study analyses support for a uniform EU welfare system and for EU schemes on unemployment, pensions, and health care. The findings show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3065,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3065"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1084,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/transdem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}