‘For a Social Europe’

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the efforts undertaken by the then rising European Left—especially European socialist parties—to finally outline a concrete programme for a ‘social Europe’ in the run-up to the adoption of the European Community’s (EC’s) first Social Action Programme (1972–4). First, it explains how European socialists, communists, and trade unions converged (despite a few exceptions) on the conviction that socialism needed to be achieved through ‘Europe’, and to organize to this end. Second, it examines the socialist parties of the EC’s Bonn Congress in April 1973, when they adopted despite some disagreements their first programmatic platform ‘For a Social Europe’—a redistributive, market-correcting, workers-oriented, democratized one. Third, it assesses how the European Left attempted with moderate success to influence the drafting of the 1974 Social Action Programme at the dawn of the 1970s economic recession.