The Building Block Approach to a Common European Model

Abstract

In every political system based on a market economy, the concept of property, and especially the legal institution of private property, plays a determining role. However, privatisation, increasing concentration, unequal distribution and internationalisation of property have created economic, political and social problems, which so far have defied solution. The creation of a ‘New Social Europe’ and the recent inclusion of no less than ten Eastern European states make the property question even more urgent. Financial participation (in the form of employee ownership as well as profit-sharing) based on an appropriate legal framework addresses these problems at their source. Instead of eliminating private property and thereby destroying the market economy, wage-dependent employees can be enabled to acquire productive property as shareholders in successful business corporations.

If then, we regard economic freedom as a good, our objective must be thus to restore property. We must seek political and economic reforms which shall tend to distribute property more widely until the owners of sufficient means of production … are numerous enough to determine the character of society.

Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, 1913