Social Dumping, Multi-Level Governance and Private Law in Employment Relationships

In an assessment of the effectiveness of EU regulation of contracts of employment, a contrast is drawn between the aims and techniques of EU interventions in consumer law and employment law, with a view to explaining that there is a structural need in EU employment law for the general aim to prevent social dumping to be implemented through minimum and porous standards that inevitably prove ineffective, and worse, in the light of inevitable juridification and individualisation in EU regulation, to prove dysfunctional altogether. The argument is illustrated by the impact of the Working Time Directive, which points to the general conclusion that an unintended effect of EU regulation of contracts of employment may have been to exacerbate problems of social dumping