Documents EU Governance 76 results

"The paper focuses on the changes that occurred to the architecture of industrial relations in Southern-European countries during the last decade. In particular, the bargaining systems of Italy, France, Spain, Greece and Portugal are compared, with particular attention to the legislative measures enacted under the influence of international institutions after the 2008 financial and sovereign debt crisis. The theoretical framework of reference is the literature on comparative politics as recently reviewed by Thelen. At the same time, the work takes into account the labour law dogmatic category of "inderogability", represented by the couple law-branch agreement, outcome of the Fordist class compromise. Recent trends of industrial relations show that such a binomial has been strongly eroded in front of the strengthening of company and plant agreements prerogatives. Therefore, by using a multidisciplinary approach, the paper concludes by arguing that the countries analysed are shifting from a highly regulated pattern to a common "neo-liberal" trajectory, with the asymmetry of power between labour and capital growing in favour of the latter."

"Since the sovereign debt crisis, the European Union has focused on regulating young people's transitions to work. Today, an EU governance infrastructure for work transitions is centred on the reinforced European Youth Guarantee. Sociologists view youth as a transition marked by milestones of social inclusion such as building independent social lives and transitioning from education to work.
This study analyses how young people's work transitions are regulated in the EU via three research objectives: contextualisation; assessment and critique; and transformation. First, I contextualise how national and EU labour regulation ‘individuated' young people's transitions. By individuation, I refer to placing the primary responsibility for work transitions on young individuals and reducing the role of public institutions and the social partners to provide skill-building opportunities. This regulatory approach reinforces young people's already increased risks of entering adverse life trajectories and intensifies the broader trends of welfare demutualisation and labour flexibilisation. Second, I assess and critique the current EU governance infrastructure for work transitions. This novel governance model improves policy coordination, but individuation remains embedded in it. Third, I argue that work transitions should be regulated to ensure quality in young people's access to work and quality in their work. Access to work should not be pitted against work quality. I therefore propose guiding principles for regulators and practical ideas for integrating these principles into the EU governance infrastructure. These practical ideas include compelling EU labour law regulating work transitions, the development of convincing EU regulation of traineeships or innovative uses of EU funding."

"This report presents an analysis of current and emerging risks in Europe, highlighting the need for a proactive and coordinated approach to risk anticipation, risk assessment and risk governance. In response to the increasingly complex and interconnected risk landscape, the European Commission and the High Representative have launched the EU Preparedness Union Strategy. This report aims to support the strategy's objectives by providing a scientific and evidence-based foundation for policy and operational decisions. It examines 47 risks and explores concepts such as cross-border risks, emerging risks, and High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) events. The report's methodology involved a wide-ranging review of EU institutions' reports, scientific publications, and stakeholder consultations, and provides a multi-faceted perspective on Europe's risk environment. A EU-wide risk assessment framework is crucial; this report supports its development by fostering a shared understanding of different risks and methodologies to assess them, laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive and integrated multi-hazard risk assessment framework."

"Employee and employer relations and their regulatory mechanisms and institutions are undergoing profound change in contemporary capitalist societies. Globalization has created instability in the form of wage competition, the decentralization of collective bargaining and the deregulation of labour standards, thereby undermining relationships between employers, trade unions and the state at both sector and national levels. On the other hand, by opening up space for trans-nationalisation, Europeanisation has increased the complexity of the industrial relations map. The recent financial crisis has revealed deep ‘economic' fissures within the complex European project, with profound dis-integrative implications for employment relations in Europe. New levels, actors and institutions, new relationships and interdependences among company, sectoral, national and transnational public and private stakeholders have been created.

The edited volume focuses on the dynamics and strategies of the social partners (unions and their representatives and employers and management) involved and affected by these transformations. In particular, it provides a wide-ranging empirical evidence illustrating that a multi-level approach is today potentially the most suitable way to understand the current transformations as well as to examine their social effects. The edited volume also examines the difficulties facing social partners, particularly labour unions, in developing multi-level strategies while at the same time coping with the current economic and political changes."

"Liberal Intergovernmentalism has a particular set of assumptions about the relationship between voters and governments. Either voters are content to trust their governments, because issues have low salience, or governments react to voters' preferences. How far is this ‘supply side' of the theory still valid in the newly politicized world of EU politics? This article discusses the assumptions about representation in the theory, and looks at the conditions under which the assumptions might still hold and what this means for EU politics today. If the representational assumptions still hold in this highly politicized EU world, then the theory would predict policy gridlock. On the other hand, if there is a growing gap between publics and elites, then the assumptions, and the related propositions about the democratic deficit, no‐longer hold. Either way, the inherent optimism of the theory is undermined."

"Il saggio si propone di mettere in evidenza le dinamiche e le criticità del modello di organizzazione del mercato del lavoro in Europa: le indicazioni provenienti dal livello comunitario, votate alla creazione di un mercato che sia al contempo flessibile per le imprese e sicuro per i lavoratori, hanno carattere trasversale e si riflettono sui rapporti lavorativi nelle tre fasi di ingresso, di uscita e di contratto in essere (oltre ad avere un risvolto sui modelli di relazioni industriali). I diritti dei lavoratori e le esigenze organizzative delle imprese trovano nuove forme di contemperamento e di rafforzamento reciproco in un mondo produttivo sempre più lontano dal modello fordista e sempre più orientato all' "Industry 4.0"."

"Until the financial crisis of 2008, European labour politics has mainly been shaped by horizontal EU market integration through the free movement of goods, capital, services and people. Since 2011, the latter has been complemented by vertical EU integration through the direct surveillance of EU member states. The resulting new economic governance regime of the EU opens contradictory possibilities for labour movements and the European integration process."

"In the mid-2000s, the Single Market Program and European Monetary Union lost momentum, as public services advocates increasingly succeeded in tempering attempts to liberalize public utilities through legislative amendments and Court of Justice rulings. After the 2008 crisis, however, the EU's shift to a new economic governance (NEG) regime provided EU executives with a new tool to advance their objectives. Unlike EU directives, country-specific NEG prescriptions require neither the approval of the European Parliament nor their transposition into law, making it more difficult for social forces to contest them. Our analysis of NEG prescriptions for public utilities in two sectors (rail and water) and four countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Romania) across 10 years (2009–2019) shows that the shift to NEG provided EU executives with new extra-parliamentarian and extra-juridical tools that allowed them to revive their stalled commodification agenda; at the price of accentuating the EU's democratic and justice deficits."

"In October 2022, the Academy of European Law (ERA) in Trier celebrated its 30th anniversary with a congress devoted to the legal dimension of the European sovereignty. 1992 was not only the year in which the ERA was founded, but also a key moment in the history of European integration, as it marked the signing of the founding treaty of the European Union, the Treaty of Maastricht. While sovereignty was a highly controversial issue at the time, the (geo)political and economic challenges facing the Union in recent years have brought it back to the centre of the debate. This book brings together some of the papers presented at the Jubilee Congress and explores recent concepts such as 'budgetary sovereignty', 'strategic sovereignty', and 'digital sovereignty'."