Rediscovering the fundamental EU value of “solidarity” will be key to the future of Europe, President Michael D Higgins told a conference in Florence on Thursday. It was “essential to recognise that the founding treaty of the European Union, while some might wish it were so, was far from being a neoliberal charter. That is the essence of solidarity.”President Higgins praised the November Gothenberg summit’s initiative to bring social policy and a European Social Charter back into the centre of European construction. Social cohesion was an imperative that was a precondition for a popular willingness to accept other elements of the European project, he argued. A sufficient basis for the legitimisation of such developments depends on a prior achievement of social cohesion.

Source: The Irish Times May 10, 2018 17:26 UTC