*** MARIE-CECILE ESCANDE VARNIOL, SYLVAINE LAULOM, EMMANUELLE MAZUYER, PASCALE VIELLE (Eds.): Quel droit social dans une Europe en crise ? Editions Larcier (Groupe De Boeck, 39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-10) 482511 - Fax: 482693 - email: commande@deboeckservices.com - Internet: http://www.larcier.com ). Europe(s) series. 2012, 397 pp, €65. ISBN 978-2-8044-4904-9.
Has this book, arising from collective academic research over twelve months along with a conference organised in Lyons, France, found favour with the Directorate for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission that financed it? The question clearly deserves being asked because the results obtained by the researchers, mostly lawyers specialising in labour law and social protection law, hint at the possibility of 'social regression' if budget and financial concerns continue to take precedence over social and political concerns. Everyone will agree that the subject is highly topical and also highly important, particularly when one remembers that European citizens will be going to the polls in a year's time to vote in a new European Parliament, which could take on an unpleasant political colouring if one isn't careful…
Whilst the 2008 financial crisis gave rise in the European Union to a crisis with the euro, sovereign debt and employment (the end and consequences of these crises are impossible to predict, explains Sylvaine Laulom in the introduction to the book, which is just as pertinent today), the research aimed to assess the impact of this global crisis on changes in national labour law and social protection in eleven EU member states, from Germany to Sweden via Belgium, Austria, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom. The authors examine in practice how social law has been used by these member states and more particularly to see whether it has been used by governments to soften the crisis or whether it is rather seen as a barrier to economic recovery.
Before going on to study the situation nationally, the first section of the book paints the European backdrop. Researcher Emmanuelle Mazuyer (CNRS and Université Lyon 2) reveal that the concept of flexicurity, so very fashionable with the European Commission in 2008, has not been challenged in any way, but it is inaction and the attitude of waiting to see that has characterised the work of the institutions when it comes to work and employment. On the other hand, explains Prof. Laulom (of Université de Saint-Etienne), management of the crisis has been characterised by a 'return to the intergovernmental,' which has revealed deficits in terms of European governance. The various means found in the course of weeks and months to stem the crisis, alongside the fact that they can organise and encourage 'social dumping,' have a major fault in that they were designed to 'reassure the markets and financial services by making the reduction of public debt a priority,' which could entail damaging social consequences, be it an increase in the retirement age, a freezing of pay (or even a pay cut), a push towards the privatisation of public services or the trend of decentralising collective bargaining to company level to the detriment of the branches. This analysis is not really denied in the eleven national reports completed in October 2011, which demonstrated above all that few countries have applied flexicurity policies worthy of the name in practice.
Using these national assessments, three areas of comparison are addressed in the third part of the book. Christophe Teissier firstly shows that in face of the crisis, one country's perception differs from the next, which leads to very different consequences in terms of changes in social rights. Sylvaine Laulom shows that these contextual differences have not prevented a number of common trends from emerging. Thirdly, Pascale Vielle (of the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium) looks at the legitimacy of the crisis measures and points out that in the social domain, liberty has been taken in terms of the legality of how measures have been pushed through and, more seriously still, also in terms of respect of fundamental rights and freedoms. At the end of the day, comments Sylvaine Laulom, the research shows that what is looming on the horizon is the danger of social regression, including in social dialogue. Poor, often precarious, migrant or economically dependent workers, who are already covered very badly by social rights, may become the first victims. Clearly, adds Prof. Laulom, the legitimacy of the 'recipes' and other forms of 'mass deregulation of labour law' recommended by the Commission, the European Central Bank and, in some cases, the International Monetary Fund, is questionable, and even more so the push for flexibilisation of the labour market, which feeds into an explosion of inequality and insecurity in most to he countries studied. The icing on the cake is the flexicurity policies that some people used to challenge in the past, but which have now 'almost vaporised in a return to unmitigated flexibility.' The European social model runs the risk of being thrown out of the window if one isn't careful. Rapidly, too. This message has been transmitted to the Commission. Will any attention be paid?
Michel Theys
*** SONJA BEKKER: Flexicurity: the Emergence of a European Concept. Intersentia Publishers (31 Groenstraat, B-2640 Mortsel. Tel: (32-3) 6801550 Fax: 6587121 - email: mail@intersentia.be - Internet: http://www.intersentia.com ). Social Europe Series, No. 30. 2012, 333 pp, €85, £81, $119. ISBN 978-1-78068-091-0.
The European Community (whether it is called the European Community or the European Union is academic) has always tried to reconcile social concerns and an improvement in economic performance. In these times of crisis and therefore of budget cuts, tension between the two aspirations has been growing. In 2007, the European Union thought it had found the miracle solution by developing its own idea of flexicurity, in other words of common principles to reconcile flexibility and security on the labour markets. Hence member states thought they had found the right way of dealing with labour market issues at supranational level without losing their own autonomy. This brilliant book by a researcher at Tilburg University explains the emergence of the concept of flexicurity at EU level. The author is an expert in the coordination of economic, social and employment policies in the EU, who tries to understand how the concept was developed and more particularly how it has been imposed. The answers she provides are innovative in the sense that she enriches the academic literature on flexicurity by making recourse to theories of new governance, which have the merit of adding a European perspective to a domain that has always been addressed from the national viewpoint in the past. After describing these new systems and revisited the academic literature on the roots of flexicurity, Sonja Bekker describes the institutional framework for which flexicurity was developed, in other words the rules in the EU treaty and the guidelines on the inclusion of stakeholders, and the way players have viewed the rules of law and the Open Method of Coordination in this domain. The author goes on to describe in detail historical developments from 1992 to 2005, i.e. before the term flexicurity was coined in European political debate, along with the stages of its gestation and its irresistible affirmation.
(MT)
*** JAN BUELENS, JOHN PEARSON (Eds.): Standard work: an anachronism? Intersentia Publishers (see above). Publications on Labour Law. 2013, 235 pp, €65, £62, $91. ISBN 978-1-78068-132-0.
The Research Unit Social Competition and Law at Antwerp University in Belgium has created an instrument for monitoring the fate now and in the future of indefinite work contracts in the countries of Europe. This book is one of the first visible results of the instrument, which tends to demonstrate that this privileged form of employment is doing better that one might imagine amidst the prevailing winds of deregulation. This study of a legal nature has led various researchers to examine the situation in Germany (the corporatist model), Belgium (an example of the continental model of labour market regulation), Spain (the continental model again, but of additional interest because of its very high numbers of part-time and temporary workers), Finland (the Scandinavian model of the labour market), the Netherlands (often connected with Scandinavia, but interesting given the high number of part-time workers) and the United Kingdom (the most obvious example of a highly liberalised labour market in the EU), along with Romania and Slovenia. It emerges that standard work has not become an anachronism: although it is at times under pressure, it is bearing well and giving rise to new variations, which deserve study.
(PBo)
*** FRANK HENDRICKX (Ed.): Active Ageing and Labour Law. Intersentia Publishers (see above). Social Europe Series, No. 31. 2012, 320 pp, €89, £85, $125. ISBN 978-1-78068-124-5.
Having now reached 80 years of age, lawyer Roger Blanpain has been a leading light in Belgian and European academia and has also made a name for himself in the United States of America, where he has lectured in a number of universities. In order to pay tribute to him on his eightieth birthday, several of his friends, former students and/or colleagues put together this book that they dedicated with a grin to active ageing and labour law - on which the emeritus professor Blanpain is an expert. Last year, 2012, was the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations, and the presence of older people at work will necessarily raise a number of issues, for example age discrimination in recruitment and selection, seniority rules, pay and working conditions, and modern concepts like work-life balance and adjustments made for older people in order to allow them to stay on the labour market. All these subjects are covered in the book, with the authors' aim being to verify in the light of European Court of Justice case-law the role that labour law can play in ensuring positive active ageing.
(PBo)
*** LAURA TILINDYTË: Enforcing Health and Safety Regulation. A Comparative Economic Approach. Intersentia (see above). Ius Commune Europaeum series, No. 108. 2012, 329 pp, €65, £62, $91. ISBN 978-1-78068-110-8.
Senior lecturer at the legal faculty of Maastricht University, Laura Tilindytë looks in this book at application of the health and safety regulation, starting with a general description of the regulation before making an economic examination of its enforcement, during which she discusses dissuasion. Laura Tilindytë then looks at enforcement of the regulation properly speaking, describing the various stages, namely surveillance and inspection of the workplace, room for manoeuvre in decisions and penalising violations. The author then describes the international legal framework surrounding application of the health and safety regulation and analyses measures taken in this connection by the European Union and the International Labour Organisation. There is a chapter on application of health and safety regulations in England and Wales, along with a chapter on their application in Germany.
(SH)
*** The Governance of Large Research and Medical Databases in Clinical and Research Multi-Centre Trials. 4th Meeting of the EC International Dialogue on Bioethics. European Union Publications Office, Luxembourg. 2012, 264 pp. ISBN 978-92-79-26313-2.
This publication reports on the work of the fourth meeting of the European Commission International Dialogue on Bioethics, organised in Copenhagen a year ago by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies and the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU at the time. Work focussed on the way that large-scale biobanks should be managed politically and ethically and how they should be dealt with at European level.
(MT)
*** IDA LINTEL, ANTOINE BUYSE, BRIANNE MCGONIGLE LEYH (Eds.): Defending Human Rights: Tools for Social Justice. Volume in honor of Fried van Hoof on the occasion of his valedictory lecture and the 30th anniversary of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights. Intersentia (see above). 2012, 491 pp, €45, £43, $63. ISBN 978-1-78068-105-4.
The book on human rights is based on speeches made at the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Netherlands' Institute of Human Rights. The speech-makers address human rights in connection with the following topics: social justice against the backdrop of the inter-American system and the European Court of Justice; the African regional human rights system; the human rights committee of the Association of South-East Asian Nations; human rights at the Arab League; introducing a regional human rights mechanism in Asia; health, social justice and human rights in Europe in general and the Netherlands in particular; social and economic rights, together with social justice systems; regional systems for the victims of human rights violations in the workplace; and the possible creation of an International Court of Human Rights.
(SH)