Letterbox companies are legal entities set up by businesses to benefit from a regulatory framework in a jurisdiction in which they have little or no material operations. They enable ‘regime shopping’ for lower taxes, wages, labour standards and social contributions, as well as for different legal... Find out more

This policy brief considers what is the scope for addressing the challenges linked to irregular work schedules in EU social and employment policy. It first describes EU competence in the areas of work and employment conditions in order to assess what the EU institutions can de jure do to address... Find out more

This policy brief assesses the impact of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, ten years on. The Charter is intended to guide EU institutions, particularly the CJEU, in recognising and promoting the social rights of EU citizens and workers. The briefing, which is based on a book-length... Find out more

This policy brief examines the development of and background to the 2018 Posting of Workers Directive. Arguably, the new Directive illustrates the uneasy development of a European social dimension and marks a sea-change to the previous approach, which can be attributed to a change of preferences in... Find out more

The 2017 revised Shareholder Rights Directive gives shareholders a say on executive pay and requires institutional investors to improve shareholder engagement. The directive is thus designed to provide a counterweight to the increasingly dominant ‘shareholder’ model of corporate governance which has... Find out more

This policy brief discusses the implications for labour and trade unions of new forms of work that are organised via distributed digital networks using the internet.The authors focus on what has been called ‘commons-based peer production’ but also address the more controversial case of ‘platform... Find out more

This policy brief looks at how effective worker participation can make digitalisation a programme for success for companies and employees alike. The author provides a great number of good examples of negotiated solutions on the company level. Find out more

This Policy Brief demonstrates how legal ambiguities in the EU’s regulatory framework on worker mobility between EU member states allow companies to circumvent social regulations in order to save on labour costs.Taking concrete examples from Finland and the Netherlands, the authors show that firms... Find out more

This policy brief demonstrates how the emphasis on the primacy of economic freedoms has negatively affected the application of EU social security rules and the working conditions of posted workers. It also discusses the legal ambiguities accompanying the notion of 'genuine undertakings' and some... Find out more

This policy brief demonstrates how the EU's financial and economic crisis has been used to attack European collective labour law. Amendments to the Lisbon Treaty, changes in the EU's economic governance and austerity measures have led to drastic national labour law reforms which undermine... Find out more