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The paper starts from the assumption that efforts to remedy Europe's democracy deficit will also have to address the social issue of the Europeanization process. This is a challenge with new dimensions. Europe embarked on its integrationist path as a mere economic community. In its formative era, the constitutional perspectives of German ordo-liberalism were attractive, at least according to the ordo-liberal account. European policy has a twofold structure: at the supranational level, it is committed to economic rationality and undistorted competition. Redistributive (social) policies could and should be left to member states. However, this structure was refined in the 1970s and 1980s. Monetary union and the Stability Pact later completed the process, and the German Constitutional Court's Maastricht judgment endorsed its constitutional validity. However, the new dynamics and the drive for ”ever closer union” written into the Maastricht Treaty has led to a strengthening of European regulatory policies and a broadening of their scope, neither of which is compatible with the ordo-liberal legacy. Meanwhile, the erosion of the economic constitution has not paved the way for a remedy for Europe's social deficit. Neither the Open Method of Coordination nor the commitment to a social market economy written into the Constitutional Treaty, nor the new social rights charter provide a conceptually sufficient and politically credible basis to this end.