European Values in Morality Politics: A Common Pattern? The Example of Prostitution, Surrogacy and Abortion

Morality issues are a battlefield that has served as a window of opportunity for the rise of values politics in the European Union. These issues are commonly attached in the literature to a specific kind of conflict labelled morality politics as giving way to uncompromising value clashes and to the unlikeliness to reach consensual arrangements. We analyze to which extent and how moral issues generate an ad-hoc type of European morality politics (EMP) tailoring the usual patterns of clashes of values according to the rules of the game coming with the European territory. We mobilise two case studies. Prostitution and surrogacy have in common to have recently resurfaced as transnational problems provoking international controversies and legal challenges. Subsequently, both have become bones of contention in EU arenas due to requests by member states, judiciary action or political and social mobilisations targeting European institutions.