As the European Union charts its course through a rapidly shifting global landscape, it continues to emphasize a need to strengthen its “competitive model.” This model—designed to ensure economic leadership, productivity, and innovation—is seen as crucial to maintaining Europe’s relevance and resilience. Simultaneously, the EU aspires to reinforce its social contract: ensuring social protection, fair labor, inclusion, and wellbeing.

But herein lies a paradox.

Competitiveness, in its conventional economic sense, is predicated on outperforming others. It thrives on differentiation, advantage, and ultimately, winners and losers. Even with a well-intentioned social contract layered on top, the competitive model often produces exactly the social imbalances such a contract is meant to repair.

This raises a fundamental question:
Can competitiveness and social wellbeing truly coexist—or is it time for a different foundation altogether?

The Competitive Model: Productive Yet Problematic

To be clear, competition can drive innovation, efficiency, and growth. It has propelled much of the technological and economic progress we benefit from today. But it also carries systemic side effects:

• Rising inequality, as those with more resources accumulate even more;
• Precarity of labor, with downward pressure on wages and worker protections;
• Environmental degradation, as cost-cutting and short-term gain override sustainability;
• Social fragmentation, as individuals and nations are pitted against each other.

Efforts to balance this through policy or social investment often amount to damage control, rather than systemic redesign.

The Alternative: A Collaborative Model

What if we reversed the logic?
What if, instead of adding social safeguards to a competitive base, we started with wellbeing, equity, and collaborationas the foundation?

A collaborative model would reorient our systems to:

• Focus on shared value rather than zero-sum outcomes;
• Measure success using wellbeing indicators, not just GDP;
• Foster co-creation and reciprocity between nations, sectors, and communities;
• Embrace ecological and intergenerational responsibility as central, not peripheral.

This isn’t just a theoretical ideal. We’re seeing glimpses of this already:

• The Wellbeing Economy Alliance, including governments like Scotland and New Zealand;
• The rise of Doughnut Economics, as embraced by cities like Amsterdam;
• Indigenous economic frameworks that prioritize balance, sufficiency, and relationality.

These movements show that a collaborative model is not only possible—it may be more robust, more ethical, and more human.

The Deeper Shift: From Scarcity to Sufficiency

Ultimately, this conversation touches on more than economic models. It asks us to reconsider our cultural assumptions:

• What are we really competing for?
• What if the scarcity we fear is, in large part, manufactured by the systems we uphold?
• What happens when wellbeing for all becomes the goal, not a byproduct?

It also calls into question our identity as modern citizens. Do we see ourselves as isolated competitors, or as interdependent participants in something larger?

A New Social Contract for a New Era

The EU’s desire for a renewed social contract is timely and important. But if it is to be more than a patch over deep structural rifts, it must ask not just how to cushion competition, but whether competition—at least as currently framed—still serves us.

A collaborative model offers a different vision:
One where social wellbeing isn’t a trade-off, but a starting point.
One where no one is left behind because the system isn’t built to leave anyone behind.
And one where the success of one doesn’t come at the cost of another, but contributes to the whole.

It’s not only a better contract.
It may be the only sustainable one we have left.

Govert van Ginkel is a facilitator, trainer, and founder of Bridging Spaces. He specializes in dialogue, systems thinking, and restorative approaches to social and organizational transformation.
www.govertvanginkel.nl | www.bridgingspaces.nl

Govert van Ginkel

This article is written by Govert van Ginkel. Govert specializes in Nonviolent and Effective Communication and is active in this field as a trainer, speaker, coach, and mediator. More information about Govert can be found here. The current training offer can be found here