Social rights protection in the EU: unlocking the social content of the EU Charter

The lack of a European consensus on social justice has not been filled by the EU Charter up to now. In fact, the Court of Justice has derived from the EU Charter social rights only in cases regarding very specific vulnerable groups, or when and if, social rights' protection is clearly supported by secondary law. Still, this weakness of judicial social rights' protection merely mirrors the very shortcomings of the EU when it attempts to reach beyond purely economic integration. In fact, social rights were left unprotected during the Eurocrisis, without offering an avenue to address the growing inequalities within several States. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has changed the scenario. It has re-launched the European Pillar of Social Rights and, above all, it has forced the EU institutions to pass the Program Next Generation EU. This program aims at transforming the economic structure of the EU but, on the same token, it might also feed national fiscal policies and draw new boundaries between the State and the market. If this new dynamic takes hold, the social content of the EU Charter could be triggered, this might have an important spill-over effect by permeating interpretation of EU law.