Recht auf Recht: Threats to meritocracy – a workfare paradigm?

Pandemics, climate change and working poor are all phenomena challenging a liberal welfare state, a workfare paradigma, based on a model of a meritocratic society: For instance, what is the basis of action of a liberal welfare state, when the demand for labour simply does not exist, because the limits of growth have been reached because of ecological reasons, as Prof. Dr. Becker, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, raises as a question in one of his current research projects. Against such a background it is time for re-thinking social rights from a liberal perspective, their justification. And as this phenomena are global ones one should does it in an European perspective, as done in the context of the European Pillar of Social Rights already. This is what we want to do in the framework of such an event in rudimentary form, also by structuring a current discussion situation.

"As we overcome the pandemic, as we prepare necessary reforms and as we speed up the twin green and digital transitions, I believe it is time to also adapt the social rulebook" (Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission).

About this series of events: Being an advocate for citizens whose rights are in danger of remaining rights or whose individual basic rights are not even formally guaranteed by law in the first place must be a leitmotif of liberal legal policy. Our webinar series "Recht auf Recht" (Right to Justice) aims to examine legal practice on the basis of such a leitmotif and to accompany it constructively.

With the kind support of the law firm Kanzlei Baum, Reiter & Collegen.