Democratic legitimacy and European labour law

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Following the Treaty of Amsterdam of June 1997, and the UK's opt-in to the Social Policy Agreement, the role of the social dialogue in the making of EC labour law is formally enshrined in the EC Treaty. In Case T-135/96, UEAPME, a challenge to the Parental Leave Directive, the Court of First Instance (CFI) asserted that agreements reached through the social dialogue, which are incorporated into directives, may be challenged on grounds of their democratic legitimacy. The CFI also required the Council and Commission to determine whether the EU social partners, the parties to the Parental Leave Agreement, achieved 'sufficient collective representativity', while the Court itself undertook its own review. The article contrasts the CFI's EU constitutional law model of democratic legitimacy of the social dialogue with an industrial relations model rooted in national labour law systems and argues for a 'European labour law' which combines the two models. It questions whether the courts are the best place for questions of democratic legitimacy, representativity and autonomy to be decided. On the other hand, the article explores the potential of the UEAPME decision to legitimate developments in the EU social dialogue and outlines how the CFI's identification of the European Parliament as the source of democratic legitimacy can be exploited in the current conjuncture.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: