The Role of EU Competition Law and Policy in Promoting Solidarity and Combating Austerity

This paper aims to explore the influence of Keynesian and neo-Keynesian employment theories on Article 3 TEU’s social policy aimed at ‘full employment’ and of the German neo-liberalism in shaping a ‘highly competitive social market economy’. The historical method of interpretation of EU social goals will be based on my interpretation of the goals of EU competition law (63 ICLQ 2, 2014) by examining, in particular, the macroeconomic goals. The intersections of competition law and social policy and micro- and macroeconomics are essential to understand the role of competition law in shaping the social values of solidarity and in order to combat the negative effects of the EU austerity measures. As unemployment targets are entirely missing in the convergence criteria (16 CYELS 2014 on ‘The Impact of the EU Crisis on Law, Policy and Society), the purpose of my paper is to critically review the austerity obsession as a possible breach of the Lisbon’s Treaty promise to deliver Keynes’ ‘utopian’ ambition of full employment, given than only half of the EU population is in active employment. Finally, the paper aims to demonstrate how competition law can and should integrate an active focus on employment friendly commercial considerations of undertakings/corporations willing to merge or in breach of competition rules. By setting employment targets to the undertakings in question, e.g. avoiding job cuts and/or creating new jobs, when balancing their commercial intentions and objective justifications, competition law can implement a social policy to combat austerity and actively promote solidarity.