Is the CJEU Discriminating in Age Discrimination Cases?

Claims have been made that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is more lenient in accepting age discriminating measures affecting older people than in those affecting younger people. This claim is scrutinised in this article, first, by making a quantitative analysis of the outcomes of the CJEU’s case law on age discrimination cases, followed by a qualitative analysis of the line of reasoning of the CJEU in these cases and concluding with an evaluation of the Court’s reasoning against three theoretical approaches that set the context for the assessment of the justifications of age discrimination: complete life view, fair innings argument and typic

Labour law in a changing world

The world around us is changing rapidly due to digitalisation, robotisation, the green transition, growing scarcity of resources, and an increasingly individualised society at large. Many of these issues profoundly affect the world of work. Not surprisingly, a lot of attention is paid to each of these changes in the field of labour law and many others. In some fields, like socio-economics, new theories are proposed to deal with these changes. Like Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics and Mariana Muzzucato's Mission Economics. Anticipating the paradigm shifts these theories will create, prof. Beryl ter Haar's research will re-think, re-imagine, and re-shape labour law. As such her research will reconsider the basic values, purposes and functions of labour law, including established institutions such as the employment contract, the need for social security and social benefits and trade unionism. This is important since understanding where we are heading towards, will ensure the coherence and consistency of our labour law systems, enable us to make the transition, and find more sustainable labour law solutions for nowaday labour law problems

The (In)Effectiveness of the European Employment Strategy

Qualitative studies of the European Employment Strategy produce conflicting accounts of its effectiveness within the Member States. Furthermore, such studies are limited in that they predominantly concern a small number of country case studies and one or two particular policy issues. Obtaining an accurate overview of the effectiveness of the OMC is therefore problematic. This article constructs a quantitative framework to analyse the effectivnes of the EES and applies it to ten EU Member States between 2005-2009. The analysis differentiates between shallow voluntary compliance, whereby member state responses to the EES represent activities which they themselves identify as a priority, and deep voluntary normative compliance, whereby member state activity is related to specific Council recommendations to improve policies in a particular area. The paper finds substantial evidence for both forms of compliance, however, an analysis of the formation of country specific recommendations, reveals the deeply politically negotiated nature of their formation and the limitations of our findings

Intergenerational bargaining, EU age discrimination law and EU policies – an integrated analysis

This report aims to provide a discussion and analysis of EU age discrimination law and EU policies for younger and older workers and persons, and the interaction of law and policies. Furthermore, the ways in which EU law and policies hinder or enable intergenerational bargaining and age-related regulation and measures for younger and older workers will be investigated. In this regard intergenerational bargaining refers to the integration of policies and strategies for younger and older workers through collective bargaining and social dialogue. Younger and older workers must be defined in a contextual way. EU statistics often cover the age groups of 15-24 and 55-64. EU legislation and policy initiatives may have a different and broader scope; for example, when it comes to policy initiatives the notion of younger persons often refers to persons up to the age of 29

Harnessing Public Institutions for Labour Law Enforcement. Embedding a Transnational Labour Inspectorate within the ILO

The paper explores how to integrate a Transnational Labour Inspectorate (‘TLI’) dealing with transnational private instruments of Multinational Enterprises (‘MNEs’) into the International Labour Organization (‘ILO’). After exploring monitoring initiatives with roots in public international organizations, we will argue that from an international law perspective on international legal personality such activities can be justified. Under the qualification of ‘subject normation’, as we dub these activities, we will argue that the ILO is the best situated locus to embed a system to inspect commitments MNEs voluntary adhere to in their CSR strategies, including Global Framework Agreements. Finally, we explain how the TLI as we envisage it could fit within the existing system of enforcement and compliance monitoring of the ILO

The growing potential integration capacity of the acquis of the European Social Model

This paper engages in the discussion about the meaning of the open method of coordination (OMC) for the development of the European Social Model (ESM). It argues that, from a legal perspective, the OMC is a positive development rather than a threat for the ESM. To support this argument, the paper introduces an analytical model, based on suggestions of Dehousse and Weiler (1990), to assess the potential integration capacity of the acquis of the European Social Model (ESM) based on the legal dynamics of integration. From such the acquis of equal opportunity in employment and active labour market policies are assessed for their potential integration capacity. The analysis finds that over the course of time, the potential integration capacity of the respective acquis have become stronger since the introduction of the OMC. Therefore, the conclusion is that the utilisation of the OMC to govern these social policies is a positive process which has strengthened Europe’s capacity to further develop the ESM.European social model; acquis communautaire; open coordination; employment policy; soft law; law