Imagining transnational solidarity in the EU through Hegel’s idea of mutual recognition

Abstract

How do we, EU constitutional scholars, define solidarity? For the most part, solidarity is used as a political soundbite for something that is generally seen as ‘good’ or normatively desirable. In this paper, I make two arguments. On the one hand, I critically reflect upon the dominant approach in EU law under which solidarity as a principle chiefly governs relations between the Member States. Citizens in the EU are at the moment not a unit of concern for which solidarity produces legal outcomes. On the other, based on Durkheim's work on enlightened self-interest, I show that measures in EU law that invoke solidarity mainly do so on economic grounds and do not allow for the creation of socioeconomic and political bonds between citizens in the EU. I then turn to what solidarity in the EU could be. By revisiting Hegel's idea of mutual recognition as the condition for freedom, I offer a more robust understanding of solidarity. Finally, I offer a brief look into potential areas where solidarity might become a meaningful principle for connecting citizens for non-economic purposes and by offering thoughts on space for further research.

1. Introduction

How do we, EU constitutional scholars, define solidarity? ‘I know it when I see it’ ¹ seems to be the common denominator of definitions of solidarity found in EU law, one of the most elusive concepts in EU law and scholarship. ² For the most part, it is used as a political soundbite for something that is generally seen as ‘good’ or normatively desirable. We are used to seeing statements such as ‘the Next Generation EU underscores the breadth of solidarity between the Member States’ ³ or ‘solidarity is the lifeblood of the European project.’ ⁴ However, we often also read that solidarity means ‘institutional arrangements based on sharing risks and resources within the European Union’ ⁵ or ‘public support for providing financial help to member states in economic and financial difficulties’. ⁶

In theorizing solidarity in the EU, the literature differentiates between three levels of solidarity: between Member States, between generations, and between peoples. ⁷ All three find expression in different places in the Treaties, albeit without a precise definition of their meaning. McDonnell argues that solidarity should be regarded as a fundamental principle of the EU legal framework and guide interpretation even when it is not explicitly mentioned. ⁸ The literature on solidarity in the EU echoes its unclear legal nature, by most extensively addressing it in the context of social rights and social policy in contrast to the imperatives of the internal market. ⁹

In this paper, I argue that the principle of solidarity in EU law as yet only applies to relationships between the Member States. ¹⁰ Citizens in the EU are at the moment not a unit of concern for which solidarity produces legal outcomes. ¹¹ Limitations to a more robust transnational solidarity in my view take the following two forms. First, solidarity has been given the status of a binding legal principle only when governing relations between the Member States. Conversely, EU law does not provide the necessary space for solidarity between citizens fully to emerge. Second, solidarity is predominantly used as an economic category, to justify measures of financial assistance which are based on conditionality and reciprocity. ¹² While useful as a political soundbite, solidarity in this context merely justifies measures aimed at the overall economic progress of the EU as a whole. At best, solidarity is used to support financial redistribution, such as within the framework of the NGEU, ¹³ where the logic is that some redistributive non-reciprocity between solidary Member States is acceptable, because their cohesion contributes to the overall economic progress of the EU.

Recent developments further underscore the need normatively to connect citizens in the EU in a genuine political union, ¹⁴ an endeavour that solidarity, robustly understood, would greatly help. For example, the REPowerEU programme follows the same budgetary governance path of the NGEU, ¹⁵ by reliance on energy solidarity; while the newly agreed-upon Pact on Migration and Asylum raises concerns about the EU's vision of us and the other. ¹⁶ All these initiatives persistently question the multiple memberships and loyalties of citizens in the EU, ¹⁷ but prevent the formation of social and political bonds on a transnational level. Reducing solidarity to a justification, of what are ultimately economic purposes and those focused on connecting the Member States, exacerbates this dynamic. There is equally very little attention by EU scholars devoted to providing a sophisticated account of the principle of solidarity ¹⁸ between citizens in the EU that might fill that gap. With this in mind, this paper explores the potential that the principle of solidarity has for creating a transnational social and political bond between citizens in the EU. Building on the Hegelian tradition of recognition through social conflict, I set out the contours of the philosophical foundations of solidarity between citizens and its role as a legal principle in the normative commitments of the EU of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. From the perspective of mutual recognition in a Hegelian sense, the essential question that solidarity would need to answer is: what enables persons to recognize the freedom of others as a condition for their own freedom? The idea of this exercise is not to reach an abstract definition of solidarity that then ought to be applied to EU law instruments. Instead, to follow not only Hegel's ideas but also his methodology, ¹⁹ one must trace the development of social phenomena to reconstruct them. ²⁰ I will therefore first inductively trace the development of the understanding of solidarity in EU law, with the aim of critically assessing whether at this stage of its development there is space for a transnational understanding of solidarity.

I do this in three steps. In section 2, I expand on the two dominant usages of the principle of solidarity in EU law. On the one hand, I critically reflect upon the prevailing approach in EU law under which solidarity is used as a principle chiefly governing relations between the Member States. On the other, I use Durkheim's work on enlightened self-interest to show that measures in EU law that invoke solidarity mainly do so on economic grounds and never actually reach the non-reciprocal level of redistribution that would allow for the creation of socioeconomic and political bonds between citizens in the EU. In section 3, I then turn to what solidarity in the EU could be. By revisiting Hegel's idea of mutual recognition as the condition for freedom, I offer a more demanding reading of solidarity. In section 4, I offer a brief look into potential areas where solidarity might become a meaningful principle for connecting citizens for non-economic, non-reciprocal purposes and offer thoughts on space for further research.

2. Solidarity in EU law

To show that solidarity in EU law does not live up to its potential as a principle for sustaining social and political bonds, I will proceed in two steps. The first is to emphasize that the EU as a polity is still focused on its Member States as primary political actors, by showing that only in relations between them does solidarity in EU law have legal consequences. The second then turns to demonstrating that even in areas of EU action where citizens play a more prominent role, solidarity is never used as more than what Durkheim calls enlightened self-interest.

A. Member States first

While it is true that the principle of solidarity was used by the Court of Justice in a number of different contexts, ²¹ including those between citizens in relation to welfare benefits, the context in which the Court pronounced that the principle of solidarity has concrete legal consequences was in interactions between the Member States. Commission v. Italy was a case concerning the introduction of a system of premiums for slaughtering dairy cows and for withholding milk and milk products from the market, one that Italy did not properly implement. The Court, finding that Italy infringed its obligations under the relevant regulations, stated that it breached the equilibrium between rights and obligations that exists for all the Member States of the (then) Community. It thereby jeopardized the equality not only of the Member States, but also of all their citizens. This was for the Court what the duty of solidarity demanded, a principle that underpins the entire EU legal system. ²²

Recently, in the field of energy, the Court of Justice has added further flesh to the bone of the principle of solidarity. Germany appealed against the decision of the General Court in which the latter annulled a Commission decision concerning the OPAL pipeline. ²³ Originally, the OPAL pipeline was to be used exclusively for gas supplied through the Nord Stream by the Russian Gazprom. ²⁴ However, Gazprom never used more than 50% of the pipeline's capacity. As a consequence, following Germany's request, the Commission amended the conditions of use and allowed that 50% of the pipeline use be bid for by an undertaking having a dominant position on the Czech market (given that the exit point of the pipeline is in the Czech Republic). ²⁵

Poland initiated an action for annulment of this decision, among others, based on the breach of the principle of energy solidarity, which the General Court upheld. ²⁶ In its appeal to the Court of Justice, Germany argued that the principle of solidarity has but a political significance and cannot be relied upon to annul a decision of the Commission. ²⁷ This in turn prompted both the Advocate General and the Court of Justice explicitly to address the legal status of the principle of solidarity. The Advocate General found that, whereas the principle of solidarity appears throughout the Treaties, it has many forms and purposes and does not always operate on the same level (between Member States, between citizens, between generations). Nevertheless, the Advocate General found that the principle ‘is such that it may be regarded as significant enough to create legal consequences.’ ²⁸ The Advocate General also explicitly emphasized that the application of the principle of solidarity between the Member States in the area of asylum, immigration and external border control ²⁹ may be transferred to the area of energy. ³⁰ He set out the type of solidarity obligations that befall decision-makers and that are subject to judicial review: ³¹

A judicial review of such decisions must, first and foremost, establish whether the EU institutions have conducted an analysis of the interests involved which is compatible with energy solidarity and takes into account, as I have said, the interests of both the Member States and the European Union as a whole…. ³²

The Court of Justice followed the Advocate General's approach. It started by saying that the principle of energy solidarity is a specific expression of the principle of solidarity, one of the fundamental principles of EU law and closely linked to the principle of sincere cooperation. ³³ The Court continued, agreeing with the Advocate General, that solidarity has in fact been justiciable before, in the area of asylum, immigration and external border control, and there is no reason for it not to form the legal basis for reviewing decisions of EU institutions. ³⁴ Perhaps addressing the concern expressed by the Advocate General on the lack of an express definition of the principle of solidarity, the Court offered the following interpretation of the principle:

[…] the principle of solidarity entails rights and obligations both for the European Union and for the Member States, the European Union being bound by an obligation of solidarity towards the Member States and the Member States being bound by an obligation of solidarity between themselves and with regard to the common interest of the European Union and the policies pursued by it. ³⁵

In sum, solidarity has most forcefully been touted a legal principle by the Court in cases that involved the Member States and their mutual rights and duties. In the EU, Member States’ insistence on remaining the masters of the Treaties ³⁶ results in the bypassing of citizens in supranational decision-making. ³⁷ When international treaties create complex duties and obligations between their members, their formal equality can also become an instrument of domination. ³⁸ Sharing resources and mutually deciding on ways in which to redistribute them, while pursuing multiple common and interconnected objectives, paves the way for unjust outcomes. This is particularly the case in situations where human rights are protected in a formalistic way without any regard for economic inequalities between citizens. ³⁹ In that sense, a focus on solidarity between states and their equality in supranational organizations for its own sake may be counterproductive and, in any event, insufficient to produce the aims the EU has set for itself.

The European Union has long prided itself on its focus on the individual, through a narrative according to which its legal system is uniquely sustained by the principles of primacy and direct effect. ⁴⁰ To this we may add the constitutionalization of free movement rights, the case law on EU citizenship, and the buttressing the EU's fundamental rights protection through the Charter. On this view, individuals are to be seen as instrumental to the greater aim of legitimizing the EU as an autonomous system of law and governance. ⁴¹ As I explain further in the next section, this narrative, while problematic in itself, ⁴² is in my view increasingly fading away, as economic benefits of the integration project permeate the solidarity discourse.

B. Durkheim's enlightened self-interest at best

Despite the fact that EU law claimed special status based on its focus on the individual, I argue that new trends, in particular after the Euro crisis, are replacing that account. The understanding of solidarity as enhancing the connection between the Member States is one of the reasons why citizens in the EU are, in reality, little more than economic operators. The EU's economic constitution has, at least until the Maastricht Treaty's inclusion of EU citizenship in primary law, been the dominant source of and rationale for granting and expanding rights of individuals. Free movement rights have been elevated to the status of fundamental rights, placing cross-border economic activity at the centre of the individual rights discourse. ⁴³ With the balance skewed in favour of economic rights, fundamental rights come into play merely as a possible counterargument, ⁴⁴ and the constitutional imagination of a political connection between citizens remains underdeveloped. ⁴⁵ In addition, the Euro crisis made equality between the Member States valuable for its own sake through a strict application of conditionality. The logic of conditionality is at its core an insurance that the Member States receiving assistance will nevertheless continue to pursue a sound budgetary policy, so it would ultimately not become necessary for other Member States to cover the liabilities of the former, in contravention of the prohibition of monetary financing under Article 125 TFEU. ⁴⁶

As a result, strict conditionality that features in Article 136(3) TFEU, endorsed both in financial assistance and as a relevant consideration in the quantitative easing programmes of the European Central Bank, had rather different outcomes across different Member States, but with little ability for contestation by affected citizens. For example, debtor states implemented severe cuts to their social security systems and citizens affected by these changes only had recourse against the national decision-makers implementing them. Yet because these changes were the result of the conditions set out in Memoranda of Understanding negotiated with the Troika, there was no possibility for a challenge at the national level to succeed. ⁴⁷ Debtor Member States have thus lost a significant part of their budgetary sovereignty. ⁴⁸ In creditor states, however, the same financial assistance mechanisms were subject to legal challenge for fears that this would incentivize debtor states to shirk their responsibility of a sound budgetary policy. Finally, the redistributive consequences of anti-crisis mechanisms were felt with different intensity across Member States, ⁴⁹ without a proper avenue for EU citizens to have a say on the creation or the aftermath of such disparities. How may we judge these developments from the perspective of the principle of solidarity? If legal principles (such as solidarity) are to have any purchase, they ought to be examined against not only their legal coherence, but also their social, economic and political outcomes. ⁵⁰ For this, I will turn to social theory and how it regards solidarity in highly interdependent societies.

Emile Durkheim remains one of the most influential social theorists of solidarity in political modernity, and his work is used widely in the EU literature on solidarity. ⁵¹ He demonstrated the existence of roughly two stages of solidarity in societies, each of which represents a conceptually tighter bond between citizens than the previous: mechanic and organic solidarity. ⁵² First, mechanic solidarity is present in traditionally small and homogeneous societies and assumes that help is provided on the premise that it will also be received, if and when necessary, as an act of altruism. Cohesion in mechanic solidarity is thus the result of likeness among its members, who have a collective conscience. ⁵³ Durkheim's mechanic solidarity is evident in the law on EU citizenship, where the Court of Justice gradually expanded solidarity obligations of the host Member State, albeit solely after a certain period of integration, or in the words of Domurath, of ‘acquired sameness’. ⁵⁴ Solidarity here is premised on a certain level of integration of free movers into the host Member State, thus still not departing from identity as the glue for membership. ⁵⁵

Second, organic solidarity according to Durkheim exists in modern and heterogeneous societies with a multitude of interests and interdependence, where help is provided based on ‘enlightened self-interest’ that guides the smooth operation of the system. ⁵⁶ We can find elements of organic solidarity formation in the EU based on the pursuit of a shared goal in Cohesion Policy, the aim of which is ‘reducing disparities between the various regions and the backwardness of the least-favoured regions’. ⁵⁷ Solidarity in that sense means recognizing the high level of interdependence between the Member States and a shared sense of advancing European integration to everyone's benefit. ⁵⁸ Yet solidarity in the current EU legal framework, as does Durkheim's organic solidarity, remains superficial (or formal) in that it presumes morality being inherent in interdependence and reciprocity, ⁵⁹ but does not seek to determine actual patterns of domination resulting from activities that ‘on paper’ promote equality between all citizens. ⁶⁰ In other words, should we resign ourselves to seeing organic solidarity between the Member States as the EU's finalité, we would stop short of asking whether the citizens living in the EU actually live in conditions of political equality. ⁶¹ It may thus be the case that Durkheim’s work cannot offer much to discovering the full potential of solidarity in a polity such as the EU.

So far, we have established that an important, or perhaps the central, function of solidarity is to connect individuals or states to join forces in pursuing the common good. ⁶² The limitation that Durkheim's enlightened self-interest brought us to is reciprocity: we do things, expecting that we will, perhaps not immediately, but eventually, get something in return. That ‘something’ may well be the overall improved conditions of our community, i.e. the EU's economic success. Enlightened self-interest merely makes us aware of the fact that we depend on others to achieve our own goals, which through this process become communal goals. ⁶³ From the previous we may say that the EU has certainly achieved a level of solidarity that connects its Member States towards shared economic, and increasingly political, goals.

However, for Durkheim, solidarity ‘on paper’ is enough. Establishing enlightened self-interest is not concerned with looking into patterns of domination among the different members of society. ⁶⁴ That is a problem. Reducing solidarity to a placeholder for actions based only on Member States’ relations and reciprocity between them buttresses patterns of domination of some Member States over others, resulting in unjust outcomes for citizens in the EU. ⁶⁵ It is sufficient to look at the dire consequences befalling the Greek society and economy today, with predictions that it will take decades for it to return to its pre-2007 size. ⁶⁶ Against that background, statements such as the one that conditionality-based financial assistance to Greece was the ‘largest solidarity ever given to any country in the world’ ⁶⁷ acquire a particularly sour taste. But even before the Euro crisis, it was clear that EU law, with its focus on constitutionalizing market freedoms, took up a clear ideological stance that put the market first, and any sort of transnational intersubjective connection second. ⁶⁸

In the case law on solidarity presented in the previous section, the Court focused on Member State relations and made no mention of citizens in the EU in explaining the principle of solidarity and the obligations that stem from it. Why is this a problem? The EU comprises citizens who hold different layers of membership (state and individual), and these different sources of membership are at times overlapping and potentially inhibiting each other. ⁶⁹ This may lead to undesirable results: a public policy conducted by decision-makers with input from one level of membership (for example national) with consequences for the other level (individual), or vice versa. Dawson and de Witte convincingly showed that reliance on legitimation through the national level deprived citizens of the ability to be meaningfully represented at the EU level, due to the domination of Member State preferences clashing against each other at the EU level. ⁷⁰ In that constellation, citizens were unable to connect based on their social or economic preferences, but only through the preferences of the political majority in their Member State. ⁷¹ In addition, third-country nationals who reside in the EU are at best able to influence the policies on a local level but remain entirely without a voice on the national and EU level.

A different way of envisioning the individual entails a greater level of political autonomy for citizens in the EU, who will have heretofore been able to form a transnational socioeconomic bond. The literature emphasizes that the position of the citizen in the EU's constitutional frame does not yet amount to a true political role (or in the words of de Witte, offer emancipation on the transnational level). ⁷² Their role in the European project should not be merely to use and benefit from the internal market and its (many and diverse) by-products. It is possible to envisage a role for citizens in the EU that is more than that of a self-interested agent in the internal market: ⁷³ that of political citizenship. ⁷⁴ As the integration project expands, so does the space for the citizen to take part in these political and institutional transformations. Harlow argues that cultural identity and bonds of solidarity are both the necessary condition and the consequence of input into political decision-making. ⁷⁵ Habermas highlights the same mutual reinforcement of solidarity and the sovereignty of citizens in the EU on a transnational level. ⁷⁶

While a full transnational political membership in the EU is perhaps still incipient, ⁷⁷ there is an important momentum it creates: the sovereign power of citizens at the supranational level now exists alongside and is a competitor to Member State sovereignty. ⁷⁸ In what comes next, I turn to how we might imagine a more progressive and cohesive role for the principle of solidarity between citizens in the EU.

3. Solidarity through Hegel’s mutual recognition

We have thus seen the limited reach of solidarity as currently used in EU law. By digging deeper into the philosophical meaning of solidarity, I argue we can find plenty of reasons to use it as a genuine social, economic, and political bond between citizens in the EU. What follows is not a comprehensive proposal to reform the Treaties, or even new mechanisms in EU law, but rather represents a first take at a new perspective that we, as EU constitutional scholars, might take on the principle. I argue that solidarity should be understood as what Hegel means by mutual recognition, ⁷⁹ an intersubjective mediation process resulting from the inherent interdependence of citizens, who through this process achieve freedom.

The importance of solidarity as a principle is much greater than that of mobilization for the purposes of economic progress, although this process will necessarily need to begin with ensuring economic prosperity. ⁸⁰ From the perspective of mutual recognition in a Hegelian sense, the essential question that solidarity would need to answer is: what enables persons to recognize the freedom of others as a condition for their own freedom? ⁸¹ As I hope to show, understood in this way, solidarity in EU law has the potential of being a genuine social and political bond between citizens in the EU. Solidarity understood as Hegel's mutual recognition inevitably changes who we are, and through it we in fact become citizens of the EU as political beings.

For Hegel, mutual recognition as a social practice comes from his conception of freedom, developed in his Phenomenology of Spirit. His view of freedom as the collectively self-legislated Spirit does not rest on a normative, abstract principle such as justice that is to be considered as inherent or natural in man ⁸² but is instead based on, in a dialectical fashion, ⁸³ a historical and institutional development of self-legislation: a collective social construction created through a process sustained by mutual recognition. ⁸⁴ To undertake this study fully is a gargantuan task ⁸⁵ that is wildly beyond the scope of this paper – my aim is merely to scratch the surface of what a Hegelian approach to understanding solidarity in the EU might look like. The turn to Hegel will allow us to see the encounters of citizens in the EU in their struggle for recognition in a new light, by exposing how they are singularly affected by the EU’s existence and modes of governance.

Solidarity in EU law is, as I have shown above, not yet a principle connecting citizens in the EU into a real political community. Solidarity as a political concept, found in nation-states or lower-level political communities, operates as a dialectic between the individual and the community and does not obliterate or neglect the individuals it connects. ⁸⁶

The argument I aim to defend here states that EU integration created new types of encounters for its citizens that demand mutual recognition sustained through solidarity. Free movement of workers (EU and third-country alike), family reunification rights, EU citizenship more broadly, migration and asylum across the territory of the European Union, among other things, bring about new challenges for recognition for citizens in the EU. ⁸⁷ From a materialist perspective, these interactions demand higher social protections from the Member States who have traditionally been the providers of social security; put functional pressures on the EU legislator to resolve common issues and pool resources; and inevitably stretch national budgets. From an idealist perspective, contemporary European integration challenges existing ideas of belonging and the other: it transforms traditional notions of national identity by adding a European dimension, at the same time foreclosing it towards third-country nationals who seek to partake in the project, either as economic contributors or by seeking protection from harm elsewhere. The sheer scale of these interactions creates novel and unaddressed interdependencies between citizens in the EU ⁸⁸ and make solidarity an imperative guiding principle for the EU's political and social cohesion.

What is freedom (and therefore conditions of mutual recognition) for Hegel? Pippin offers a useful overview. To begin with, ‘the most important aspect’ of mutual recognition is the ‘unavoidable social dependence’: ‘acknowledging, acting in the light of, such relations of original dependence is a necessary condition for the achievement of true independence, or true “self-realisation,” or “actualised,” “concrete” freedom’. ⁸⁹ A social and political connection between citizens in the EU therefore cannot be achieved unless we take as a starting point their inevitable transnational dependence. ⁹⁰ This is both a theoretical and a concrete point: our interdependence is both the cause and the result of the necessity to recognize ourselves as political and social beings in others with whom we partake in the EU as a project. ⁹¹ Pippin continues:

I can succeed in being taken to be an agent, in being recognised as acting on entitlements and permissions, only if I recognise the other as such, respond to the other on the basis of such equal claims to entitlement (otherwise I cannot recognise his recognition of me), or only if some mutuality of recognition is possible. ⁹²

For Hegel, mutual recognition is a decidedly historical process: ‘an intelligible process moving towards a specific condition – the realization of human freedom’. ⁹³ When the political community has through historical achievements ⁹⁴ collectively self-legislated its own normative commitments under which citizens may achieve mutual recognition, ⁹⁵ we can speak of freedom in a Hegelian sense. This may also be explained in terms of intersubjectivity as the mediator in Hegel's idea of freedom: ‘the social relations through which the individuals first become themselves.’ ⁹⁶

In concrete terms, this means that institutional conditions must, by their design, allow for an understanding of freedom of others that is not a barrier, but a condition of ‘the realisation of one's own freedom’. ⁹⁷ This includes ‘analysing the existing shared norms in social practices and the processes in which these norms are debated’. ⁹⁸

At the moment, the narrative of the incremental creation of common institutions and an internal market through legal doctrines of EU's constitutional law is, according to some, fulfilling the cohesive function between citizens in the EU, joining them into a genuine European society. ⁹⁹ Von Bogdandy argues that European public law transformed social conflicts from intergovernmental to conflicts within one society. ¹⁰⁰ However, such a view of cohesion at the moment does not provide for a social bond between citizens in the EU, let alone a political one. ¹⁰¹ That is so for two reasons. First, a history of European public law is one of a top-down imposition of legal rules and norms that do not necessarily have material purchase among those governed. ¹⁰² This is particularly important to stress for the role that law played before political modernity. ¹⁰³ Second, a full and equal exercise of civil and political rights may only come about once social differences (in other words, social class) are removed from the relevant society. ¹⁰⁴

Solidarity, having an important social cohesive role, cannot but be expressed in the form of mutual recognition as the condition and the necessary expression of equality in terms of rights and taking part in a common project. ¹⁰⁵ In this respect, ‘a political community is a community of the recognition and realisation of equal rights and duties’. ¹⁰⁶ In the simplest of terms, being a citizen in the EU means having a normative status that is dependent on social recognition. ¹⁰⁷ Can such abstract ideas acquire a concrete form in the EU?

4. By way of a conclusion: social and political bonds between citizens in the EU

Thinking about transnational solidarity in the EU cannot be fully achieved without properly answering the question of who transnational solidarity in EU law is for. In this paper I was consistently referring to citizens in the EU and I have done so deliberately. Solidarity in EU law simply must include all those residing in the EU, otherwise it cannot create conditions for the EU to be a community of freedom, as described by Hegel. The inherent, objective dependence of everyone living in the EU requires that they are all able to engage in and achieve mutual recognition. In other words, it would be impossible for any person in a society to proceed towards the process of mutual recognition if not all members of the society are able to partake in that encounter and interaction.

Traditional accounts of transnational EU solidarity have focused on EU citizens, who as free movers deserved to be seen as members of the ‘community of care’, regardless of them not being nationals of the host Member State, ¹⁰⁸ or of them having moved or not. My focus encompasses all citizens in the EU's territory, regardless of the passport they hold ¹⁰⁹ and regardless of whether they moved or not. Without a definition as broad, it is impossible for solidarity as mutual recognition to take hold. If our recognition actions focus on some, but not all, citizens taking part in the integration project, it is impossible to speak of proper basis for the creation of social and political bonds. For this, we must first give up on the normative priority of the Member States and the need for a strict economic reciprocity in their interactions across the EU.

For a genuine political connection to thrive, citizens in the EU must lead a dignified life, where their economic and social needs are met. Solidarity as mutual recognition may thus be a vehicle for a more serious rethink of redistribution in the EU and the starting point towards a genuine political community of citizens. This was clear to the European New Left in the 1970s, where socialist parties campaigned for European solidarity to take shape through workers and their representatives taking part in political decision-making, and that matters of social justice must also, alongside that of economic growth, be part of EU policy. ¹¹⁰ This would further require serious consideration of introducing a direct EU tax, in order to foster ownership of the project, and make obvious how the contributions made impact the lives and livelihoods of those living in the EU. Cohesion of economic and social conditions across the EU's territory is an indispensable condition for connecting those living in the EU. An expansion of social rights, or an improvement of social conditions, is an important first step. ¹¹¹ By preventing crucial questions of redistribution to be politically discussed at the EU level, the Member States are preserving the focus of the principle of solidarity on themselves. These are big questions that the EU scholarship has yet to answer. Answering them requires careful reflection: they are important areas for further research that would benefit greatly from a Hegelian approach.

Only after solidary acts of mutual recognition contribute to the creation of socioeconomic bonds and cohesion may we speak of a path towards a genuine political bond for citizens in the EU. The EU has undoubtedly changed people's daily lives and livelihoods in ways that are presently not accounted for. At the same time, EU law impoverishes democracy at the national level, as it continually expands its reach into areas of national competence. ¹¹² The EU's current institutional setup does not explicitly recognize, but nevertheless allows for an interpretation of transnational membership, as a demand for recognition and the exercise of public power in their common interest. Primacy and autonomy of EU law specifically may provide the tie that binds citizens directly to EU law. ¹¹³ I am not suggesting that citizens suddenly abandon their membership of the nation-state in which they live, and they indeed may have different interests and preferences vis-à-vis that constituency. ¹¹⁴ Rather, to achieve Hegel's ideas on freedom with solidarity as the guiding principle, I argue, a deep rethink of the integration project and who it is for is necessary.