Abstract

The author reflects about the overthrow, occurred in the last two decays, of the legal principles ruling international exchanges. The liberalization of exchanges has become as such a value, contrary to the principles of social justice included in the Philadelphia Declaration of 1944. Economic competition has become the ultimate purpose of each legal order, according to the dogma of the expansion as an absolute value achievable only by a globalized competition. This normative schizophrenia, which separates economic and social dimension of the process of globalization, could be surmounted only restoring social justice as founding principle of international trade. In this perspective, liberalization is only one possible instrument to attain the aim of social justice. In order to abridge the difference between the rights of companies, which can be exerted at international level, and the rights of workers, which remain confined at domestic scope, the author proposes to create an "international social citizenship" as a corollary of free circulation of capitals and goods.