Abstract

The European Union is widely perceived as an incomplete and therefore reformable project, capable of assuming a social dimension in addition to the purely economic one, which characterizes its current structure. Yet, it was built according to the principles of neoliberal federalism, whereby the supranational level must confine itself to depoliticizing the market in order to guarantee the functioning of free competition. The irreformability of this scheme is ensured by the institutional architecture of the Union, but also by a mechanism that we can call the market of reforms: Any form of financial assistance to member States is linked to their anchoring in neoliberal orthodoxy