Book Review: European Employment Law: A Systematic Exposition by Riesenhuber, Karl
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627231167312 |
| Author | Primož Rataj |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Riesenhuber, Karl. European Employment Law: A Systematic Exposition, 2nd ed., Cambridge –Antwerp –
Chicago: Intersentia, 2021, 1016 pp., ISBN 978-1-83970-151-1, (hardback)
Reviewed by: PrimožRataj ,Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
DOI: 10.1177/13882627231167312
European Employment Law: A Systematic Exposition is volume 4 of the Ius Communitatis series, a
well-known series that covers the most important topics in the ‘Europeanisation’of law, such as
European Union (EU) company, consumer, migration, criminal, social security and also employ-
ment law. The present volume, first published in 2012, represents a timely revised second
edition after nearly a decade.
The author of this remarkable volume is Karl Riesenhuber, Professor of several fields of law at
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, who managed to compile it with the support of his (research
and study) assistants. It needs to be stressed that the volume does not concern, and is demarcated
from, comparative employment law of EU Member States. Instead it relates to EU primary law
and many sources in secondary legislation, as well as the growing body of case law of the Court
of Justice of the EU.
The volume is structured so as to provide the relevant European complement to a traditional legal
area, one of the cornerstones of national legal systems that is quite substantially influenced by
European law. It covers the complete scope of European employment law up to March 2021 and
is divided into five thematic parts, namely, foundations, conflict of laws, protection of personality
rights, and thelargest parts concerning individual and collectiveemployment law. Parts on protection
of personality rights and individual employment law are further divided into several chapters, the
former into chapters on anti-discrimination law and data protection, and the latter into chapters con-
cerning employmentconditions, workers’safetyand health, atypical formsof employment, protection
of specific groups of workers and employee protection in business restructuring and insolvency.
For those who already know the first edition of the book, the revised second edition has, there-
fore, retained the basic structure of the entire work and has remained largely unchanged along with
the structure of most of the chapters. Nevertheless, the new edition is nearly 200 pages longer with
additions almost throughout, especially due to the new developments in CJEU case law and (legal)
scholarship, such as journals, commentaries and handbooks as well as numerous monographs and
articles on individual topics. The sheer size difference also reflects the inclusion of novelties due to
legislative changes in the past decade. The (new) second edition takes account of the 2018 reform of
the Posting of Workers Directive, the further development of the Written Statement Directive into
the Transparency Directive, the new Whistleblower Directive, and the further developed Parental
and Carers’Leave Directive (all from 2019). Moreover, the Company Law Directive as
Book Reviews
European Journal of Social Security
2023, Vol. 25(1) 95–104
© The Author(s) 2023
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