Contrasting interests or two sides of the same coin? - tracing economic and social interests in the shaping of EU labour law
Hartzén, Ann-Christine LU
(2025)
Nordic Conference on Legal Methods
- Abstract (Swedish)
- The development of EU labour and social law has been described as a pendulum in the sense of focus shifting between economic interests, such as competitiveness for industry, and social interests, such as improving working and living conditions. This view is to a large extent based on the presumption that those interests are contrasting and pursuing one of them would necessarily exclude the promotion of the other. However, when looking into EU legislation in the field of labour law, it is not uncommon to find references to the need of assuring fair competition and thus possibilities for prosperous enterprises as well as refences to the need to ensure workers’ protection. In this sense these two supposedly contrasting interests could perhaps... (More)
- The development of EU labour and social law has been described as a pendulum in the sense of focus shifting between economic interests, such as competitiveness for industry, and social interests, such as improving working and living conditions. This view is to a large extent based on the presumption that those interests are contrasting and pursuing one of them would necessarily exclude the promotion of the other. However, when looking into EU legislation in the field of labour law, it is not uncommon to find references to the need of assuring fair competition and thus possibilities for prosperous enterprises as well as refences to the need to ensure workers’ protection. In this sense these two supposedly contrasting interests could perhaps better be understood as two sides of the same coin. Regardless, there are constant discussions of whether EU legal developments emphasise one of these interests over the other. In addition, legal scholars of different legal fields and/or from different legal traditions may have differing opinions. Questions that arise are to what extent it is possible to identify and analyse the interests that shape EU law in the field of social policy and what such an ambition entails in terms of methodological considerations?
Previous research has shown that it is possible to conduct socio-legal studies based on Luhmann’s system theory whereby normative values shaping the communication produced within a specific regulatory system, a system of industrial relations, can be identified and provide answers in relation to the system’s regulatory capacity. In such studies, legal sources and texts reflecting the communication of the regulatory system are analysed as the empirical material of the study through a careful text analysis. This paper seeks to explore to what extent the methodology applied in this previous research can be adapted to enable the study of what interest shape EU labour and social law.
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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/66f031ac-93f7-44b8-9409-87a550dd35c1
- author
- Hartzén, Ann-Christine
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- Nordic Conference on Legal Methods
- conference location
- Kalmar, Sweden
- conference dates
- 2025-05-14 - 2025-05-16
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 66f031ac-93f7-44b8-9409-87a550dd35c1
- date added to LUP
- 2025-11-06 16:35:06
- date last changed
- 2025-11-07 12:39:54
@misc{66f031ac-93f7-44b8-9409-87a550dd35c1,
abstract = {{The development of EU labour and social law has been described as a pendulum in the sense of focus shifting between economic interests, such as competitiveness for industry, and social interests, such as improving working and living conditions. This view is to a large extent based on the presumption that those interests are contrasting and pursuing one of them would necessarily exclude the promotion of the other. However, when looking into EU legislation in the field of labour law, it is not uncommon to find references to the need of assuring fair competition and thus possibilities for prosperous enterprises as well as refences to the need to ensure workers’ protection. In this sense these two supposedly contrasting interests could perhaps better be understood as two sides of the same coin. Regardless, there are constant discussions of whether EU legal developments emphasise one of these interests over the other. In addition, legal scholars of different legal fields and/or from different legal traditions may have differing opinions. Questions that arise are to what extent it is possible to identify and analyse the interests that shape EU law in the field of social policy and what such an ambition entails in terms of methodological considerations? <br/><br/>Previous research has shown that it is possible to conduct socio-legal studies based on Luhmann’s system theory whereby normative values shaping the communication produced within a specific regulatory system, a system of industrial relations, can be identified and provide answers in relation to the system’s regulatory capacity. In such studies, legal sources and texts reflecting the communication of the regulatory system are analysed as the empirical material of the study through a careful text analysis. This paper seeks to explore to what extent the methodology applied in this previous research can be adapted to enable the study of what interest shape EU labour and social law. <br/>}},
author = {{Hartzén, Ann-Christine}},
language = {{eng}},
title = {{Contrasting interests or two sides of the same coin? - tracing economic and social interests in the shaping of EU labour law}},
year = {{2025}},
}