European society and its problems

Organised by

• Department of Law

European studies have traditionally relied on the power of broad concepts to account for the experience of European integration: be it integration, power, governance, market, or legal order. These concepts, including legal order, have been imported from social sciences. Yet, one concept is conspicuously absent from this list, perhaps the most typical of all in the field of social sciences: 'society' was seen as ill-suited for picturing European integration. This background makes even more apparent the recent and pervasive return of the term society in the EU institutional discourse. Thus, typically, on the one hand, the EU is determined to be a front-runner in the transition towards a climate-neutral society as well as to establish a digital society, based on European values and European rules. On the other hand, It is adamant that the anti-LGBTQ+ law recently enacted in Hungary is a frontal and serious attack on the rule of law, and more generally on European society. How to account for this shift? Should we take it seriously? Does it correspond to a shift in the legal form? This paper will attempt to propose a framework within which to think of the EU and its law in terms of European society makes sense. This is not just because we need to subject the language of the times to its own critical pressure" (Orford/Boltanski). It is also because the concept of society, if thought on the basis of social theory, can provide a critical perspective on the world the discourse of European society promises to deliver.