Resocialising Europe in a Time of Crisis

Description

Terms such as 'Social Europe' and 'European Social Model' have long resided in the political and regulatory lexicon of European integration. But in recent years, and in spite of the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU social profile has entered a profound period of crisis. The ECJ judgments of Viking and Laval exemplify the unresolved tension between the EU's strong market imperatives and its fragile social aspirations while the ongoing economic crisis, while the various 'bail out' packages are producing a constant retrenchment of social rights. The status quo is one in which workers appear to shoulder most of the risks attendant on making and executing arrangements for the doing of work. Chapters in this book advocate a reversal of this trend in favour of fair mutualization, so as to disperse these risks and share them more equitably between employers, the state, and society at large.

Dr Nicola Countouris is a Reader in Law in the Faculty of Laws at University College London and the co-ordinator of the UCL Labour Rights Institute. His main research interests are in the areas of labour law and European law. Professor Mark Freedland FBA is an Emeritus Research Fellow in Law at St John's College, Oxford, and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Laws at University College London. His main research interests are in the areas of labour law and public law.

'Resocialising Europe in a Time of Crisis is a truly excellent collection of essays with an impressive depth and range. Its distinctive strength lies in the variety of response its contributors make to the challenge laid down by its editors: to identify ways in which the European Union could reverse rather than reinforce rising inequality and increasingly asymmetric risk distribution for those reliant on work for their livelihood. Read it to think better about how Social Europe has been marginalised and how that trend could be reversed.' Claire Kilpatrick, Professor of International and European Labour and Social Law, European University Institute, Florence