A reduction of old-age pensions under Directive 2008/94 is manifestly disproportionate if the former employee lives or would have to leave below Eurostat’s at-risk-of-poverty threshold, even if s/he receives at least half of the amounts of the benefits from his/her acquired rights.

In a surprise decision, with potentially wide-ranging ramifications, an Employment Tribunal (ET) has found that ‘workers’ as well as traditional ‘employees’ are covered by the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE).

In a recent case on fixed-term employment, the Danish Supreme Court addressed the question of what constitutes a comparable permanent employee. The Supreme Court ruled that four employees, who worked in a government agency, were not comparable with the agency’s permanent employees and for this reason they had not been discriminated against on the grounds of their fixed-term contracts.

The Craiova Court of Appeal has ruled that the continuous extensions of a fixed-term employment based on national provisions is not in accordance with the European jurisprudence. Relying on the findings of ECJ case C-614/15, the Craiova Court of Appeal made an exhaustive analysis of the relying arguments for subsequent extensions of fixed-term employments agreements for long periods of time and the objective reasons behind such use of contracts.

The absence of severance compensation for interim civil servants is not contrary to Directive 1999/70.

In case of a transfer of undertaking involving multiple transferees, the rights and obligations arising from an employment contract may be divided between various transferees, if this is possible. If not (or if it is to the detriment of the employee), the transferees would be regarded as being responsible for any consequent termination under Article 4 of Directive 2001/23, even if this were to be initiated by the worker.

In Austria, a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for bicycle deliverers has been in force since 1 January 2020. According to the contracting parties (the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and the Austrian Trade Union Federation), it is the first of its kind worldwide.¹x https://www.vida.at/cms/S03/S03_4.8.a/1342616918551/kollektivvertrag/strasse/weltweit-erster-kv-fuer-fahrradboten-abgeschlossen. On this occasion, this article examines the legal basis for employment in this sector and whether this long-awaited step will really lead to an improvement for bicycle deliverers.

Noten

• 1 https://www.vida.at/cms/S03/S03_4.8.a/1342616918551/kollektivvertrag/strasse/weltweit-erster-kv-fuer-fahrradboten-abgeschlossen.

Various of our academic board analysed employment law cases from last year. However, first, we start with some general remarks.

On 3 October 2019, in case C-274/18 (Schuch-Ghannadan), the ECJ held that a national regulation, which provides for different maximum total durations of successive fixed-term employment contracts for part-time workers on the one hand and full-time workers on the other, could result in a discrimination of part-time workers and an indirect discrimination of women.

While it is not strictly necessary to actually work in order to acquire leave entitlement under German law, the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht – BAG) has ruled that during a sabbatical (unpaid special leave) the employee does not gain any entitlement to paid annual leave.

Clause 5 of the Framework Agreement on fixed-term work applies also to workers who continuously occupy interim posts based on successive fixed-term contracts in the absence of a recruitment procedure.

On 20 June 2019, Vilnius Regional Court in Lithuania (instance of appeal) delivered a decision in a case where the applicants claimed that a temporary employment agency, UAB Manpower Lit (the ‘Agency’), which recruited temporary workers (‘claimants’) for the European Institute for Gender Equality (‘EIGE’), paid them lower salaries than permanent staff. It was ruled that the Agency had discriminated against these workers by paying them lower salaries than they would have received if they had been recruited directly by EIGE. The Court also ordered the payment of pay arrears for a certain period to the temporary staff.

The Argentine and the French civil codes have recently undergone substantial modifications to their contract law provisions. These novel statutes could serve as models for future B2B contract law reforms in Latin American jurisdictions and beyond, as former Argentine and French laws have done in the past. The authors offer a contribution that paves the way in that direction with a systematic comparative analysis. As a starting point, this article unveils the influence that the modern unified laws on contracts (UNIDROIT Principles on International Commercial Contracts (PICC) and United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods of 1980 (CISG)) have in Argentina’s and France’s new contract law. It also highlights the most obvious similarities and differences in both sets of rules. This contribution goes beyond simple tertium comparisons; the authors analyse which of the two laws offers better, or more effective, rules to achieve the desired contract law functions in various matters. Readers are provided with the best rule or solution to address the problem in question and, as the authors hope, they should conclude that both models provide for a range of complementary solutions for modern contract law reforms.

This conference paper submitted on the occasion of the 8th International Conference on Information Law and Ethics (University of Antwerp, December 13-14, 2018) that focused on modern intellectual property governance and openness in Europe elaborates upon the Text and Data Mining (TDM) issue in the field of scientific research, which is still-by the time of composition of this paper-in the process of discussion and forthcoming voting before the European Parliament in the form of provision(s) included in a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. TDM is included in the proposal for a Directive of the European parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market-Proposal COM(2016)593 final 2016/0280(COD) that was submitted to the European Parliament.

This article relies on the premise that to understand the significance of Open Access Repositories (OARs) it is necessary to know the context of the debate. Therefore, it is necessary to trace the historical development of the concept of copyright as a property right. The continued relevance of the rationales for copyright interests, both philosophical and pragmatic, will be assessed against the contemporary times of digital publishing. It follows then discussion about the rise of Open Access (OA) practice and its impact on conventional publishing methods. The present article argues about the proper equilibrium between self-interest and social good. In other words, there is a need to find a tool in order to balance individuals’ interests and common will. Therefore, there is examination of the concept of property that interrelates justice (Plato), private ownership (Aristotle), labour (Locke), growth of personality (Hegel) and a bundle of rights that constitute legal relations (Hohfeld). This examination sets the context for the argument.

This article describes the scope and contents of the newly adopted regulation governing regulatory impact analysis (RIA) and ex post evaluation of regulation (ExPER) in the Italian legal system. The article shows that this regulation has the potential to improve regulatory governance in Italy. Not only does it introduce innovations designed to increase transparency and participation, especially through strengthened consultation and communication mechanisms, but it also aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of regulatory analysis and evaluation activities. How the new regulation will be applied in practice, however, remains to be seen. In the meantime, the new set of rules are a welcome addition to Italy’s Better Regulation policy.

There is a general unease among the public across all jurisdictions about the progressive economic inequality that seems to define the new normal, and this phenomenon has been succinctly documented in numerous prominent studies. This trend of capitalism has been supported by the existing structures of the common law, albeit contrary to the aim and purpose of its original principles. The studies show that the modern capitalist societies display a persistent trend of increasing inequality, and this is summed up by the observation that modern capitalism generates progressive and intense economic inequality.
Capitalism as a socio-economic system is structured and sustained by the law and by socio-economic systems of institutions. Capitalism is not only a social ordering; essentially, it is a legal ordering. At the heart of this legal ordering are private laws, and tort law, but the most important is contract law: freedom of contract. It is common law, similar to the private law in other jurisdictions, that is responsible for the extreme inequality because it allows the institutions of capitalism to function freely and without much control. The open-ended capitalism that allows accumulation of wealth without ceiling causes progressive inequality in society and consequently works against the very freedom and individualism that are supposed to be the ideals of common law and capitalism. Because of the existing institutions of capitalism and the legal construct, freedom, fairness and the intended progress of the individual were not properly realized; the understanding of the ideas and principles of freedom, individualism, juridical equality, the right to property and freedom of contract have been imperfectly realized. With rising inequality, it is this imperfect realization, particularly of juridical equality that is in question.