Major challenges facing the EU and day-to-day issues

The EU faces important challenges. What to think about the Greek debt crisis, the migration and refugee crisis, heightened terrorism threats and the results of the UK referendum on EU membership? These issues present challenges to the original aims of the ‘European project’ of long term peace and stability in a prosperous economic environment.

It is difficult to predict where all this will lead us. I do not feel at all equipped to guess how these challenges might be met. Although they do not impact on employment directly, employment law will undoubtedly be affected too. In fact, this volume addresses the possible effect on employment law of some of these major challenges. James Davies sheds some interesting light on how the UK separation from the EU will impact its current legislation. Also from the UK, we can see that mistreatment of an employee because of her vulnerable immigration status does not amount to discrimination. We may expect more such cases in the years to come.

However, most issues in this volume relate to day-to-day matters. We can see that issues of equal treatment still influence national law to some extent. The conclusions reached in some cases may be controversial, such as the Italian ruling on whether an agency is allowed not to select a hostess for a major footwear exhibition on the basis that she is unwilling to remove her veil. Other issues have a less controversial profile, but can still be thorny – such as the German case on additional annual leave for senior employees.

But equal treatment is not the only issue. In this publication, we also look at France’s liability towards employees who have lost out on annual leave simply because France failed to transpose Article 7(1) of the Working Time Directive correctly. Not to mention the impact of ECJ decision C-533/13 in Finland, regarding restrictions on temporary agency work in a collective labour agreement. These and many more interesting questions are considered in this issue of EELC.

Zef Even, editor