The realisation of the constitutional right to social protection in Ukraine is significantly hampered by several factors, including an ineffective social protection system that encompasses both the constitutional right to social protection and a vast array of benefits, allowances, one-off payments, and so on. The “development” of this system has been significantly facilitated by the dynamics of political populism, thanks to which the number of social payments, benefits and compensations has grown steadily, despite the state’s financial and economic constraints, whilst the actual protection of genuinely vulnerable groups has declined in inverse proportion.

This article aims to analyse the role of the constitutional court in shaping the official doctrine on the protection of social rights, in particular the constitutional right to social protection, against the backdrop of a conflict between political populism and the need to effectively guarantee human rights, which is a prerequisite for the functioning of the constitutional system.

The analysis of the research conducted provides grounds for concluding that the constitutional right to social protection in Ukraine has long developed against the backdrop of a conflict between political populism – which has encouraged the expansion of statutory social guarantees without due regard for the state’s actual capabilities – and constitutionalism, which calls not for the mere accumulation of social promises, but the establishment of an effective system for safeguarding human rights.

It has been shown that this problem is largely due to the very nature of social rights. Unlike civil and political rights, they require the state to play an active role, entail the fulfilment of positive obligations, and depend on financial and economic resources. Consequently, in the sphere of social rights, the question of the limits of permissible constitutional review arises with particular urgency, as does the role of the constitutional court in seeking a balanced approach between the protection of human dignity, respect for the legislature’s discretion, and the requirements of the welfare state.

The evolution of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine’s practice allows us to trace the gradual formation of the current official constitutional doctrine of the right to social protection. In the first stage, a maximally broad approach prevailed, under which almost any social guarantee established by law was regarded as a component of this right. In the second stage, the Court recognised that the scope and mechanisms for realising social rights depended on the state’s socio-economic capabilities and, at the same time, formulated a concept of the internal structure of the right to social protection, within which its constitutional core should be distinguished. In the third stage, human dignity plays a special role; it is through this lens that the Court approaches the determination of the minimum permissible scope of social rights and the assessment of the constitutionality of legal acts in accordance with the criteria of proportionality, equality, non-discrimination, legal certainty, and justice.

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