In this introductory chapter we begin with a specific problem among the many that are facing the European Union (EU) today after the long-awaited approval of the Lisbon Treaty at last in the late autumn of 2009. Some of the main lines of force in this specific problem will then enable us to see more easily just what our main objective is in this extended essay. Consider then briefly some initial reflections on one only of the several quite serious social problems facing the EU today, the problem of European immigration.

Immigrants in Europe

Do the basic human rights of immigrants from economically less developed countries include the freedom to migrate to more developed European countries where they have far better chances for leading lives of greater fundamental well-being?

The very different and regularly changing immigration policies of most of the twenty-seven EU states testify to the large differences of opinion as to how such an important question is to be answered. Yet any eventual consensus about a harmonized European social policy cannot avoid including as an essential element not only a common European policy on access to health, education, and many other shared areas of central concern, but also a common policy on immigration.

Achieving such a consensus will necessarily involve protracted debate among various stakeholders about what social, moral, and ethical principles should form the bases of such a unified European social policy.