Jens Alber, professor of sociology, Freie Universität Berlin.

The notion of a European social model assumes that European societies have certain
features in common that distinguish them positively from the United States, most notably the social partnership in labour relations, redistributive welfare state schemes, and cohesive societies with a low degree of social inequality. The lecture examines to what extent the social reality in the EU conforms to this normative image and which challenges imperil the sustainability of the European social model. Special attention is drawn to the influence of supranational decision-making in the European Union and to the role of the European Court of Justice. Professor Alber argues that Court rulings imperil the viability of national social programs, because they open schemes that continue to be exclusively financed by national tax payers to transnational access. This introduces not only unfunded mandates for the member states, but is also in tension with the solidarity concepts of European citizens, which continue to be framed in terms of national citizenship. To learn about possible solutions, the EU might benefit from turning to the U.S. experience where the reasoning behind Supreme Court rulings is publicly accessible and thus made more transparent; where single states usually make a difference between in-state and out-of-state students in calculating tuitions; and where unfunded mandates of the federal government are likely to meet state resistance and a tax-welfare backlash.