THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SOCIAL MARKET ECONOMY ON THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC CONSTITUTION

The Court of Justice of the European Union(CJEU) has provoked an extensive debate on the relationship between the freedom on the market and social state interventions in the European market economy, by handing down four judgments in the cases Viking, Laval, Rüffert and Commission vs. Luxemburg in the years 2007-2008. It showed in these cases a clear attachment to free market thinking and gave fundamental freedoms priority over national social rights. These judgments are on the one hand attributable to the pre- Lisbon version of the European economic constitution, which was based on an open market economy with free competition and on the other, to the legal reasoning of the CJEU as the guarantor of the European economic constitution. With the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the objective of the open market economy was replaced by the social market economy, Article 3 III 2 Treaty on the European Union(TEU). This development begs the question on the legal implications of the social market economy on the European economic constitution and associated therewith, whether this move will provide for a reorientation of the legal reasoning of the CJEU. This study will address these issues.