The principle of the social state : a comparative study on the limits of the legal action between french and greek law ; Le principe de l'État social : étude sur les limites de l'activité législative en droit comparé français et hellénique

French Constitution guarantees the “Social Republic,” the Greek constitution recognizes the « Social Rule of law ». If the principle of the Social State is to this day apprehended by the authors of both states as an undetermined principle of “low content of normativity,” this study’s focus offers a different perspective on the matter. If we study this principle in the context of normativism, we will be forced to view all norms as obligatory, and we will no longer contest its normative value but focus on determining its meaning. Only in this way we will be in the position of knowing what material level of life the constituents of the two states reserved for the individual, when they qualified the states as social. The study assumes that a state is social when it possesses the foundations that habilitate, oblige and prohibit the legislator from specific actions. The constitutive norms of the social state impose limits at the legal production. Seen at a positive perspective, the fundamental norms of the social state allows the legislator to improve the material conditions of life of the individuals without any constraints. The legislator concretizes the principle of the social state in a positive sense while being free from positive obligations. The only obstacle to the creation of new benefits is the impossibility to control legal inactivity; it constitutes an intrinsic limit to the principle of the social state. Seen from a negative perspective, the constitutive norms of the social state allow the legislator to limit the access to benefits but prohibit the neutralization of the principle. The actions of negative concretization that would lead to the annulation of the social state are prohibited. It follows that a minimum of social legislation should be maintained as long as the Constitution qualifies the state as social. At this angle, the normative foundations of the social state protect the essential core of the principle or, in other words, its counter- limits. ; La Constitution française consacre la « ...