The social partners and EU treaty-making : revisiting Maastricht through the archives

dc.contributor.authorKILPATRICK, Claire
dc.contributor.authorSTEIERT, Marc
dc.contributor.authorCELLINI, Jacopo
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-15T08:07:17Z
dc.date.available2025-04-15T08:07:17Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractThis working paper sheds new light on the social partners in EU Treaty-making, particularly on today’s Title X TFEU on social policy, their interactions with EU institutions and the Member States in this process, and on EU treaty-making itself as a focus of scholarly inquiry. The Treaty-making process that led to the Maastricht Treaty is famously identified as a moment where three social partners organizations – ETUC, UNICE, and CEEP - drafted and agreed a social policy agreement (‘SPA’) annexed to the Treaty, later integrated in it. This SPA established a European social dialogue procedure by which social partners could ‘take over’ the EU law-making process on social policy and adopt a collective agreement, then capable of being generally extended by EU law. Our research proposes an adjusted reading of this important episode of Treaty-making by the social partners. The social partners’ role for Maastricht is indeed an atypical example of Treaty-making in that they had an unusual, EU institutionally supported, position to make proposals for Treaty change and their agreement was recorded as part of the official IGC documents. In a first perspective, this working paper provides an archive-based, in-depth account of their negotiations with the Commission and the Member States on a Treaty-based social dialogue procedure. In a second perspective, the social partners’ unusual role invites to reflect about the little knowledge we have of EU Treaty-making as a scholarly subject of enquiry. The working paper makes the case for the analysis of Treaty-making as a promising field and research agenda for legal-historical enquiry into the meaning and context of EU law and integration. An understanding of Treaty-making, for example, allows us to understand the origins and in particular the many uncertainties underpinning primary law in their elongated context, sometimes stretching across multiple Treaty revisions. It stresses the productiveness of disaggregating states, institutions and organisations into people with projects thereby highlighting the often-elusive nature of finding a clear will of the Member States inherent to EU law. It clarifies the concepts and context that allowed agreement on a Treaty text at a given point in time, and underscores the paths not taken in EU integration. These are only some ways in which research on EU Treaty-making is susceptible to enrich our understanding of EU law and integration.en
dc.description.sponsorshipThe ShaPE project (ShaPE – The Social Partners as shapers and makers of Social Europe: discovering foundations and futures) is funded by the European Union.en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.issn1831-4066
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/78294
dc.language.isoenen
dc.orcid.putcode1814/80856:182267059
dc.orcid.putcode1814/79951:182267060
dc.orcid.putcode1814/78617:182267061
dc.orcid.uploadtrue*
dc.publisherEuropean University Instituteen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesEUIen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesLAWen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesAELen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesWorking Paperen
dc.relation.ispartofseries2025/01en
dc.relation.ispartofseriesShaPEen
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessen
dc.rights.licenseAttribution 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.subjectMaastricht treatyen
dc.subjectPrimary lawen
dc.subjectEU social policyen
dc.subjectSocial dialogueen
dc.subjectSocial partnershipen
dc.titleThe social partners and EU treaty-making : revisiting Maastricht through the archivesen
dc.typeWorking Paperen
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.orcid0000-0001-6710-7812
person.identifier.orcid0000-0001-6294-5657
person.identifier.orcid0009-0004-3425-9173
person.identifier.other27304
person.identifier.other44289
person.identifier.other34428
relation.isAuthorOfPublication3324af48-1888-4e45-929d-c4db9afabd8f
relation.isAuthorOfPublicationf64a42fa-8c6b-4a6b-bacf-03f485610778
relation.isAuthorOfPublicationcb978f20-cee2-4c9f-a1f2-b66badb9b38c
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery3324af48-1888-4e45-929d-c4db9afabd8f
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