European institutions are paramount in the processes of upholding of the social dimension of the European economies. This article analyses some of the potentialities and limitations of Europeanisation of the social dimension which promotes de European Social Model (ESM). An institutional formative evaluation of such a development is carried out with the aim of assessing the process of supra-nationalization and of its advances and restraints. The axiological bases of the ambivalent and dual character of the ESM, which integrates growth and cohesion, are regarded as crucial for the combination of both the economic and the social.