Abstract
The new wording of Art 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union urges the EU to achieve a highly competitive social market economy. The paper seeks to find what could be the content and the impact of such a goal for the current EU.
For this purpose it analyses the provisions of the EU Treaty and of the Treaty on functioning of the EU, then programmatic documents of the European Commission and judgments of the EU Court of Justice. It concludes that the social market economy goal seems to be a commandment for EU institutions to rebalance market freedoms and social rights.