Towards a Transnational Theory of Justice for the EU:A Non-domination Approach

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The aim of the project is to develop a novel theory that can offer normative criteria for devising public policies at the level of the EU. The thesis is that EU policies that allow for the social and political domination of EU citizens are wrong because they interfere with the robust exercise of basic liberties, defined as the bundle of entrenched freedoms required for one to be able to act as an autonomous agent. This approach is based on the premise that treating people with dignity requires respecting and supporting their capacity to act as agents. A policy meets this normative criterion if and only if its implementation results in every EU citizen having effective control over the way in which social and political power is exercised over them. When EU policy provides inadequate transnational access to social and political rights it jeopardises EU citizens’ ability to exercise such effective control. Adopting this approach has several advantages: first, it can explain what is wrong with technocratic institutions that restrict citizens’ effective control over policies for the sake of improving their economic well-being. Second, it helps to highlight the fact that increasing the range of options that some EU citizens enjoy is compatible with depriving others with effective control over their basic liberties. Third, it treats social and political domination as a wrong protection from which should be robust across a number of scenarios for all EU citizens rather than conditional on whether a member-state profits from observing such safeguards.