Viking, Laval and Beyond - (Eu Law in the Member States) by Mark R Freedland & Jeremias Adams-Prassl & Michal Bobek (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

EU Law in the Member States is a new series dedicated to exploring the impact of landmark CJEU judgments and secondary legislation in legal systems across the European Union. Each book will be written by a team of generalist EU lawyers and experts in the relevant field, bringing together perspectives from a wide range of different Member States in order to compare and analyse the effect of EU law on domestic legal systems and practice.

The first volume focuses on the uneasy relationship between the economic freedoms enshrined in Articles 49 and 56 TFEU and the right of workers to take collective action. This conflict has been at the forefront of EU labour law since the CJEU's much-discussed decisions in C-438/05 Viking and C-341/05 Laval, as well as the Commission's more recent attempts at legislative reforms in the failed Monti II Regulation. Viking, Laval and Beyond explores judicial and legislative responses to these measures in 10 Member States, and finds that the impact on domestic legal systems has been much more varied than traditional accounts of EU law would suggest.

Review Quotes

"The tension between the economic and the social is a central theme within the history of the EU. This rich set of essays provides a valuable addition to the existing literature through its focus on the way that the tension plays out between the internal market and collective labour law." --Paul Craig, Professor of English Law, St John's College, Oxford

"The rulings in Viking and Laval remain hotly debated. This excellent collection of essays provides an opportunity for mature reflection on these rulings and offers a nuanced picture of their implications for EU law and for labour law in national legal systems.

" --Anne Davies, Professor of Law and Public Policy and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford

"The authors of Viking, Laval and Beyond, in my view, used a comparative method that made fullest use of its "chameleonic" potential ... realised in no small part by Prassl's "three dimensions of heterogeneity" (Chapter 6) ... At its most provocative, this collection conveys some very challenging messages about the nature, ideology, and impact of EU law ... [its] innovative "socio-legal" focus upon the Member States sheds light upon gaps and contestations between "law in the books" and "law in practice"." --Amy Ludlow, Cambridge Law Journal

"Plutôt que de partir du plus général pour aller au plus particulier, l'analyse de bas en haut permet de mettre au jour des réalités nouvelles que des constructions plus anciennes sont incapables d'appréhender ... les auteurs devaient imaginer un nouvel horizon, loin des mécanismes habituelle- ment envisagés dans ces deux champs du droit. Pari réussi." --Jean-Sylvestre Bergé, Revue Trimestrielle de Droit Européen

"What is new in this debate? Hasn't everything already been said? No, indeed it hasn't, and the book is a very helpful tool to review the judgments and the debate surrounding them in a more sophisticated and less heated temper ... The book is a remarkable attempt both to look more deeply into the economic and social aspects of internal market law, and to analyse the follow-up in Member State law; indeed, this is the very objective of the newly started, innovative publication series." --Norbert Reich, Common Market Law Review

"The great thing about this book (and about the whole approach of the new series) is that it helps readers to understand the different viewpoints and to contextualise those tensions between the EU and the member states...In a nutshell: Viking, Laval and Beyond gives a great insight into how little some "landmark" cases by the CJEU actually affect national legal systems." --Christopher Unseld, European Law Blog, September 2015

"The editors in their introduction present this book as "careful first step" in braking down "the compartmentalisation in EU law scholarship which goes hand-in-hand with compartmentalisation (and specialisation) in each of the legal system themselves", with a view of "offering both a deeper understanding of each substantive area under discussion and insights into the operation of EU law more broadly". Viking, Laval and Beyond clearly achieves this goal and much more and, in doing so, makes a very worthwhile and original contribution to the literature." --Rebecca Zahn, The English Historical Review

About the Author

Mark Freedland KC (hon), FBA is Emeritus Professor of Employment Law in the University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford.
Jeremias Prassl is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and a Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.