Claims have been made that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is more lenient in accepting age discriminating measures affecting older people than in those affecting younger people. This claim is scrutinised in this article, first, by making a quantitative analysis of the outcomes of the CJEU’s case law on age discrimination cases, followed by a qualitative analysis of the line of reasoning of the CJEU in these cases and concluding with an evaluation of the Court’s reasoning against three theoretical approaches that set the context for the assessment of the justifications of age discrimination: complete life view, fair innings argument and typical anti-discrimination approach. The analysis shows that the CJEU relies more on the complete life view approach to assess measures discriminating old people and the fair innings argument approach to assess measures discriminating young people. This results in old people often having to accept disadvantageous measures and young workers often being treated more favourably.

This article considers how empirical legal studies (ELS) and doctrinal legal research (DLR) interact. Rather than seeing them as competitors that are methodologically independent and static, it suggests that they are interdependent activities, which may each be changed by interaction with the other, and that this change brings both opportunities and threats. For ELS, the article argues that DLR should properly be understood as part of its theoretical framework, yet in practice little attention is given to doctrine in empirical work. Paying more attention to DLR and legal frames generally would help ELS meet the common criticism that it is under-theorised and excessively policy oriented. On the other hand, an embrace of legal thinking, particularly of critical legal thinking, might lead to loss of status for ELS in policy circles and mainstream social science. For DLR, ELS offers a chance for it to escape the threat of insular sterility and irrelevance and to participate in a founded commentary on the world. The risk, however, is that in tailoring legal analysis to what can be empirically researched legal scholars become less analytically ambitious and more safe, and their traditionally important role as a source of socially relevant critique is weakened. Inevitably, in offering different ways of moving to normative conclusions about the law, ELS and DLR pose challenges to each other, and meeting those challenges will require sometimes uncomfortable self-reflection.

A question that has preoccupied sociolegal scholars for ages is whether law can change ‘hearts and minds’. This article explores whether non-discrimination law can create social change, and, more particularly, whether it can change attitudes and beliefs as well as external behaviour. The first part examines how sociolegal scholars have theorised about the possibility and desirability of using law as an instrument of social change. The second part discusses the findings of empirical research on the social working of various types of non-discrimination law. What conclusions can be drawn about the ability of non-discrimination law to create social change? What factors influence this ability? And can non-discrimination law change people’s hearts and minds as well as their behaviour? The research literature does not provide an unequivocal answer to the latter question. However, the overall picture emerging from the sociolegal literature is that law is generally more likely to bring about changes in external behaviour and that it can influence attitudes and beliefs only indirectly, by altering the situations in which attitudes and opinions are formed.

In the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis, regulators have agreed a substantial tightening of prudential regulation for banks operating in the traditional banking sector (TBS). The TBS is stringently regulated under the Basel Accords to moderate financial stability and to minimise risk to government and taxpayers. While prudential regulation is important from a financial stability perspective, the flipside is that the Basel Accords only apply to the TBS, they do not regulate the shadow banking sector (SBS). While it is not disputed that the SBS provides numerous benefits given the net credit growth of the economy since the global financial crisis has come from the SBS rather than traditional banking channels, the SBS also poses many risks. Therefore, the fact that the SBS is not subject to prudential regulation is a cause of serious systemic concern. The introduction of Basel IV, which compliments Basel III, seeks to complete the Basel framework on prudential banking regulation. On the example of this set of standards and its potential negative consequences for the TBS, this paper aims to visualise the incentives for TBS institutions to move some of their activities into the SBS, and thus stress the need for more comprehensive regulation of the SBS. Current coronavirus crisis forced Basel Committee to postpone implementation of the Basel IV rules – this could be perceived as a chance to complete the financial regulatory framework and address the SBS as well.

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.

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.

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.