In the present stage of European integration, many questions are raised with regard to both the legal and political issues posited by its evolution, and to its future regarding the overcoming the reasons of the crisis related to the welfare state model. As part of an analysis on the form of the State in the most recent contemporary constitutionalism, the paper proposes a reflection on the problematic nature of the relationship between the guarantee of the principles and constitutional rights at national level, especially social rights, and the primacy of European principles of economic stability. In this framework, moving from the normative conception of constitutionalism, the paper addresses the issues of effectiveness of social rights, highlighting the crisis of the welfare state model in Italian law, and in the European one. The possibility of overcoming such a problematic nature dictates that the EU institutions become aware of the critical state in which they are currently involved, in order to bring about new and more appropriate governance measures suitable to overcome in a less casual way, than it has to date taken place, the reasons for the current crisis.