The social history of Western Europe shows that political reforms that have improved democratic rights and guarantees stem from demands by and strong mobilizations of confrontational social movements, of which the union and workers? movements were the most effective. The weakness of measures and procedures in the European Union political system at the social and democratic level unavoidably leads to questions being raised as to the existence of European social movements and their relations with European authorities. This article thus examines the conditions for the origination and development of confrontational socio-political action in the EU context, as carried out by transnational social movements both new and old. However, the difficulties the EU experiences in acknowledging the social aspect through norms, primarily in the form of an improvement and deepening of democracy, reflects a political fiction that marginalizes redistributive conflict and deconstructs the image of the sovereign nation as the basis for legitimacy of political practice.