A HIGHLY COMPETITIVE SOCIAL MARKET ECONOMY AS A FOUNDING ELEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC CONSTITUTION

di MARIO LIBERTINI (*)

Abstract The entry in force of the Lisbon Treaty offers a chance for reecting on the European principles and values, as core elements of a great federal institution. This political community is built upon a set of constitutional principles that, as coming from the national Member States constitutions, create a remarkable homogeneity between the European and the national systems. The inclusion in the Lisbon Treaty of the Social Market Economy ideology is an important step in the process of national/European harmonization, as it summarizes the liberal and democratic principles existing in all the European States. In the Lisbon Treaty, the SME theory is perceived as a political ideology, expressive of political concerns towards social assistance, social solidarity, and, more generally, towards all the Welfare State goals. The SME recognizes that the market economy is the best means to increase total welfare, but contests both the theory of market self-regulation and the opposite theory of economic dirigisme. In the SME perspective, it is the market that normally supplies all goods necessary to individuals; however, there exist specic goods the so called public goods which are excluded from the market mechanism (for example, social security, basic research, basic education, etc.) and have to be supplied necessarily by States. In this perspective, market and State play a complementary role in economy: even in a market economy scenario, the State intervention is not excluded at all; on the contrary, it is allowed, as far as necessary for the public goods supply. In the last years, after the Lisbon Treaty came into force, the role of
(*) Full Professor of Commercial Law Sapienza University, Rome. Speech at Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Firenze, 14 marzo 2011.

492

DOTTRINA

the SME theory has surprisedly changed. On the one hand, some German scholars argued the end of SME ideology; on the other hand, famous Chicagoan scholars recognized the inadequacy of the model of market self-regulation and admitted the need of State intervention, under specic conditions. In this complex scenario, changes in art. 3 TEU and, in particular, the exclusion of free competition from the list of EU aims and scopes, although signicant, do not conict with the declared purpose of building a highly competitive social market economy. In the European tradition, in fact, competition has always been perceived as a means to achieve other scopes, rather than as a value itself. As a consequence, European legislators are entitled to approve rules conicting with the protection of market competition, when this is necessary for other public interests, prevailing on the scope of market protection, to be promoted and realized. As a conclusion, the Lisbon Treaty has claried without undermining the role of competition in the current European system.
Keywords: Lisbon Treaty Competition Social Market Economy Economic constitution Market regulation. JEL Classication: B2 History of Economic Thoughts; B25 Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; K21 Antitrust Law.

I will start this speech by quoting a recent pamphlet of a prestigious colleague, Natalino Irti, professor of Civil Law and General Theory of Law at the Faculty of Law of Sapienza University in Rome. The book is entitled La tenaglia In difesa dellideologia politica (The pincers In defence of political ideology) (1). The author argues that, at the present time, the Western world is suffering a loss of credibility of political bodies and, in general, of politics, due to the lack of shared ideas on the aims and the values that ground the political community. In this situation, in the Western world, according to Irti, there are the pincers of two myths: on the one hand, the self-regulation of the markets, and on the other hand the fanatic revival of some institutional religions.
(1) Laterza, Bari-Roma, 2008.