The UAB Institute for European Studies (IEE) will coordinate the research project "EXPRESS2 - Specify and Protect the EU Social Contract". The project, with a cost of 3 million euros, will begin in 2024 and include the involvement of 11 partners from nine different countries.
How to promote a stronger, more democratic, legitimate, inclusive and sustainable social contract for Europe? How and which disruptive elements can condition the political stability and disaffection of the social contracts of member states and the European Union (EU)? The UAB's Institute for European Studies (Institut d'Estudis Europeus, IEE) will coordinate the research project "EXPRESS2 - Specify and Protect the EU Social Contract", which will spend three years, startin in March 2024, analysing the growing demand to build a new, more democratic, inclusive and sustainable social contract at European level, with greater legitimacy and more stimulating for society as a whole.
To this end, a consortium of eleven organisations from nine countries will work on a draft proposal for a social contract that will be submitted to the inhabitants of the EU, the member states and the EU institutions for deliberation. The different parties will have the possibility to participate in its preparation and to decide on its conditions, rights and obligations.
The project will be coordinated by Antoni Abat i Ninet, María Zambrano researcher at the IEE, expert in philosophy of law and constitutional law (fundamental rights), who explains that "social contracts should be living documents, adapted to allow the participation of the different parties in their content; they should be able to be amended to prevent the petrification of their founding principles and values. It is this living nature that can enable them to cope with current and future upheavals, such as economic or legitimacy crises".
The project, one of the three prioritised for funding in the call for social challenges Democratic governance for times of disruptive changes to the social contract (HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01-06), is funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe research and innovation framework programme, with a total budget of nearly 3 million euros, of which 646,977 euros are allocated to the UAB and PRUAB budgets.
