THE UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME AS A POTENTIAL INNOVATIVE TOOL FOR REFORMING THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION. PROS AND CONS

Twenty years after Nice Social Summit, the European Union organised in 2017 another Social Summit in Gothenburg, looking for new strategies to combat inequality, poverty and social exclusion. One of these new solutions debated in Gothenburg was the Universal Basic Income (UBI). Our main goal is to find out how appropriate is UBI for reforming the European social policies. Our methodology contains assessments of theoretical and empirical experiments, as well as document analyses. Our results show that UBI is not a univocal concept and its evaluation depends on different ideological standpoints. Also, UBI outcomes are contingent upon the social context. Therefore, despite its undeniable potential improvements, UBI does not seem appropriate to the European context: it would not have a significant impact on poverty and inequality but it would have very high costs. Also, since Europeans benefit from comprehensive welfare systems, UBI would not increase the progressivity of social protection