*** OLIVIER DE SCHUTTER (Ed.): The European Social Charter: a social constitution for Europe - La Charte sociale européenne: une constitution sociale pour l'Europe. Etablissements Bruylant (67 rue de la Régence, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5129842 - Fax: 5119477 - email: jean@bruylant.be - Internet: http://www.bruylant.be ). "Centre des droits de l'homme de l'Université catholique de Louvain" series. 2010, 192 pp, €46. ISBN 978-2-8027-2799-6.
This collection of essays follows on from a seminar held at the 'Palais de l'Europe' in Strasbourg to mark the tenth anniversary of the Council of Europe passing the European Social Charter (revised in 1996). The academics who wrote the essays all agree that this charter, issued by 'greater Europe,' has a great future ahead of it and could clearly help to gradually introduce a more social Europe.
The first series of essays, under the title 'The Renaissance of the European Social Charter,' interprets legal progress made by the European Social Charter, like its institutional evolution and the stocktake of its renewal that was started in 1990; boosting the European Social Rights Committee's case law on social rights in the fight against discrimination and, more specifically, encouraging integration of the Roma; and the Charter's applicability ratione personae, in other words a highly symbolic issue, with the European Social Charter being recognised as legislation to protect human rights. This is followed by carefully selected essays that look at the future, identifying challenges and examining future options.
It is at the start of this second section of the book that a seriously thorny issue is raised that will irritate or at least stand out for a number of people in the European Union. Currently United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter of the 'Université Catholique de Louvain' in Belgium and the College of Europe in Natolin, looks in his essay at how the Strasbourg Charter (European Social Charter) could contribute to the development of law in the EU. His scientific analysis examines the prosecutor's case in due form, providing grist to the mill of people who accuse the European project of sacrificing social issues on the altar of business. In his opinion, the problem is that the European Union too frequently tends to move towards the recognition of social rights without making use of the European Social Charter or by making only vague, indirect references to it. He notes in this connection that there are huge differences between the way the European Convention of Human Rights is dealt with in the European Union's legal system in a truly tangible manner and the way the European Social Charter is dealt with, falling victim to the 'old prejudice that draws a clear distinction between cases that can be taken to court and those that are claimed not to be triable cases'. Above all, the author scientifically demonstrates, reviewing the various phases in history in the building of a social dimension in the European Union, that 'Social Europe has long been a measure of how economic integration has been accompanied in the various Member States,' rather than an objective in and of itself. From 1957 to 1974, the European project's social objectives were clearly subordinate to the building of a common market. The oil crisis in 1974 led to a period (1974-1985) when a social dimension started to emerge but in the negative rather than the positive sense because the aim was to diminish the unpleasant aspects of the common market, rather than to guide the EU towards a specific European social model as such. From the Single European Act to the Amsterdam Treaty (in other words from 1985 to 1997), the negative integration continued with the elimination of barriers to trade dominating: 'From then onwards, they were created as exceptions to the fundamental freedoms of circulation and competition that define the Single Market within which there is an even playing field, and the opportunities to gradually introduce fundamental social rights, the guarantee of which is handed to the Member States, were sharply restricted,' explains the author, pointing out that in the plan for Economic and Monetary Union launched by the Amsterdam Treaty, the employment guidelines were subordinated to the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines. Finally, the current period that started with the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 has not resulted in any great changes. The Open Coordination Method's contribution to ensuring balance in the European Union between economic objectives and social objectives being 'mixed' to say the least, not to mention the fact that the objective of increased social cohesion, which has led to the adoption of national social inclusion action plans, has never really seemed to be able to free itself from the objective of increasing the numbers in work in order to guarantee respect of macroeconomic balances. As far as Olivier De Schutter is concerned, there are no reasons to be cheerful about the future, as the various reforms being examined, like economic reform, changes to the pension system and healthcare may well be painful for ordinary people and damaging to social cohesion, at least in the short-term. For this reason, the author believes it is crucial for all reforms to be subject to a reference to fundamental rights. He argues that it would even be 'justified to introduce, within the European Union itself, a surveillance mechanism of Member States' respect of fundamental social rights in order to reduce the risk of too great a difference emerging from one Member State to the next, and in order to boost the European social model'. The way he sees it, the European Union and its Member States taking better account of the European Social Charter would also be a wise move in order to consolidate social Europe at last, this plea being made more plausible because it is so amply backed by the case for the prosecution…
Michel Theys
*** Labour law and Social Europe. Selected writings of Brian Bercusson. European Trade Union Institute (5 Bld du Roi Albert II, B-1210 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2240470 - Fax: 2240502 - email: etui@etui.org - Internet: http://www.etui.org ). 2009, 701 pp, €35. ISBN 978-2-87452-160-7.
Labour law expert Brian Bercusson of the UK was a highly active fellow traveller of the European Trade Union Institute, a highly active thinktank of the European Trade Union Confederation. Until his death nearly two years ago, he was the institute's lynchpin and headed a group of legal experts who worked to build bridges between academia and the trade union world in the domain of fundamental social rights, particularly transnational trade union rights. His former colleagues pay tribute to him with this book of a selection of his most important studies. They explain in the introduction that Brian Bercusson was a lawyer-activist, an optimist in action in the service of a more social Europe, in other words a Europe that would finally turn its back on a social policy based solely on the integration of markets. The book is arranged around the nub of Bercusson's ideas, looking in turn at the EU's legal and institutional framework, collective industrial relations, employment relations, worker involvement, economic freedom in the face of fundamental social rights, discrimination and equality in employment, the working week, the special nature of EU labour law, globalisation and the future of the trade union movement at EU level. A useful book that will continue to feed into current reflections the ideas of a thinker who, in his own way, contributed to the development of a Europe that is not quite so barbaric when it comes to social affairs.
(MT)
*** ANJA HEIKKINEN, KATRIN KRAUS (Eds.): Reworking Vocational Education. Policies, practices and concepts. Éditions Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen, Switzerland. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). Studies in Vocational and Continuing Education, Issue 7. 2009,230 pp, €42-40. ISBN 978-3-03911-603-4.
Education and the world of work have experienced many rounds of restructuring in the past but this is as nothing in comparison with the changes that both education and the world of work are currently undergoing in Western market economies. Under the impulse of the new economic order, education and the world of work are adjusting in a constant battle to achieve competitiveness and greater flexibility on the labour market to a post-industrial global economy that is so different from national industries of barely a few years ago. At the heart of these transformations, professional training (directly connected with the labour market) is seen as a way of preparing people for the new economy by giving them the skills they will need to adjust to it. This research tries to discern how professional training is changing and will continue to change in the light of the economic, political and societal changes brought about by the new economy. The authors are academic experts in the science of education and sociology, who assess changes in the sphere of governance and social policies, measuring the impact on professional training and then looking at how to make professional training perform better.
(NDu)
*** AGNES BLOME, WOLFGANG KECK, JENS ALBER: Family and the Welfare State in Europe. Intergenerational Relations in Ageing Societies. Edward Elgar Publishing (The Lypiatts, 15 Lansdown Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL50 2JA, UK. Tel: (44-1242) 226934 - Fax: 262111 - email: info@e-elgar.co.uk - Internet: http://www.e-elgar.com ). 2009, 341 pp. ISBN 978-1-84844-479-9.
There is nothing new about the ageing of the population in Europe and several studies have attempted to understand how falling birth rates and longer life expectancy will impact on Western society and relations between the old and young. Intergenerational relations are seen by many as a clash between generations. They are examined in this research in which the authors aimed to demonstrate that the State and its policies, along with the family, influenced relations between young and old and their living standards. The book is by social science researchers, who assess pension systems, the social conditions of the elderly and the care they demand, with the aim of discerning the State's general attitude and the attitude of younger people towards the elderly to verify whether intergenerational conflicts actually exist in practice. This empirical research in four countries in Europe (Germany, France, Italy and Sweden) demonstrates that in fact, inter-generational conflict does not exist and solidarity between young and old is alive and kicking. The welfare state tends to provide more for the elderly because of the sheer number of older people, but gifts from the old to the young within the family counterbalance this and act as an important area of redistribution of wealth within society.
(NDu)
*** GYÖRGY SZELL, WERNER KAMPPETER, WOOSIK MOON (Eds.): European Social Integration - A model for East Asia? Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen, Switzerland. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). Labour, Education & Society series, No. 14. 2009, 302 pp, €44-70. ISBN 978-3-631-57272-6.
Does a social Europe exist that has emerged after decades of integration and if so, is it a model that can be exported to other parts of the world? These are the two key questions answered in this book reporting on a scientific seminar organised in November 2007 by the National University of Seoul in South Korea and the South Korean Institute of International Economic Policy, backed by Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The answers provided by academic experts from Asia and Europe are not clear-cut. The essays examine social policies in the EU and the EU's social policies, focussing on the processes rather than the 'model' that is generated. All the same, after other essays examining the social situation in East Asian countries (mainly China, South Korea and Japan), a message emerges that is summarised by Prof. Cae-One Kim as the fact that the European experience of harmonisation of social welfare and competitiveness has precious implications for East Asian countries. This view is expanded by Wolfgang Pape in the conclusion, issuing a double invitation to Asian countries, arguing that only by getting involved in global governance bodies can they move from Western-style globalisation to 'omnilateralism' that pays better attention to the sensitivities that prevail in Asia; and the 'European supranationality model through the pooling of sovereignties' could be useful to them as a 'post-modern model in the service of mutual interference and stronger integration through the sharing and protecting of cultural diversity in global governance beyond cultural frontiers'.
(MT)
*** HARLAN KOFF (Ed.): Social Cohesion in Europe and the Americas - Cohesión social en Europa y las Américas. Power, Time and Space - Poder, tiempo y espacio. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 -Fax: 3761727 -email: pie@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Regional Integration and Social Cohesion" series, No. 3. 2009, 372 pp, €32-90. ISBN 978-90-5201-568-2.
Comprising essays in English, Spanish and French, this book follows on from a conference in Luxembourg of US, EU and Latin American researchers working on various areas of social cohesion who, after the conference, set up a Consortium for Comparative Research into Regional Integration and Social Cohesion. The authors examine competition between actors (power), the role of history and social traditions (time) and the importance of geographical limits to cohesion (space) through five aspects of cohesion - human rights, social dangers other than poverty alone, environmental hazards, borders and regions, and urban safety. For each aspect, they examine the situation prevailing in Europe, North America and Latin America, demonstrating that social cohesion is seen and experienced differently in the three regions. It is, of course, also in a state of constant flux.
(MT)