The concept of European society in a historical perspective: a legacy from the 20 th Century

Abstract This article examines the constitutional imagination of European policymakers and legal scholars in the 20 th and 21 st centuries who participated in key treaty drafting processes that led to the listing of a series of values central to Europe’s identity in the 2012 Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations – or Société des Nations (SDN) –and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Based on this historical comparison, the article argues that the concept of a European ‘society’ characterised by a specific set of what I call ‘social-democratic values’ (listed in Article 2 of the TEU) should be read in continuity with the 20 th -century civilizational project of modern international law scholars who shaped the working of the SDN in the interwar era. Many international legal scholars close to the SDN were inspired by the French sociological school and social-democratic ideals: they anchored the working of international legal rules on the solid rock of an ‘international society’ marked by a series of values which seemed ‘modern’ in the sense that they reflected the emergence of a ‘society of individuals’ whose freedom and social rights went beyond those granted by sovereign states at the time. When seen against this historical background, the introduction in Article 2 of the TEU of a concept of ‘society’ characterised by such social-democratic values, such as pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men, to ground the EU’s constitutional order, betrays less the influence of contemporary sociological thinkers on the EU constitutional framers, than that of socio-legal theories developed by interwar scholars who wanted to modernise the operations of European colonialism and internationalism.