Tra divisione del lavoro e affinità: la dialettica della solidarietà europea

The scientific debate about the European federalizing process has mainly focused on the possibility of a qualitative development towards a formal European constitution. This perspective, especially in the aftermath of the failure of the «Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe» and the political backlashes of the financial crisis, overshad-owed the original “functionalist way” and perhaps underestimated its outcomes. Starting from Léon Duguit’s reflection on social solidarity, the essay argues that a func-tionalism rooted in a factual solidarity has generated (although within a dialectic between commutative justice and distributive) stronger solidarity constraints than a call for ethical solidarity. In this perspective, factual solidarity does not contradict ethical solidarity but can premise it. The conclusion is a less pessimistic reading of the European integration process; how-ever not an ingenuous one as some technical issues suggest a continuous caution.