Abstract

The European Union has recently showed a relevant development in the process of integration toward a unitary system. The EU fundamental rights, which are recognized in the article 6 of new EU Treaty, which (materially) incorporates the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, represents one of the most important forms and expressions of this. This evolution leads to raise again the old question on the relationships between (form and guarantees) of national constitutionalism and EU primary law (which, at least for a part of the legal scholarship, may be qualified as a real European constitutionalism). According to this perspective, it would even be unrealistic to identify possible forms resistances (counter limits) to the recognition of general primacy of EU law on the fundamental rights enshrined by national constitutions. The article purports to address this question, particularly in light of one of the most expressive constitutional traditions of national constitutional cultures, that of social rights and the related relationship with the EU law. The recent jurisprudence of the EUCJ in this field seems to support to the doctrinal concerns which point to the risks of a devaluation of institutes and constitutional forms of guarantee of fundamental rights (especially in the economic sphere), as observed in the more relevant constitutional traditions of the European constitutional heritage.