Book Review: From Social Competition to Social Dumping
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Author | Constanze Janda |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271601800407 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
414 Intersentia
Written (only) by lawyers, the book can serve as a va luable research tool for scholars
from the legal disc ipline. A er al l, as the last chapter states, ‘European socia l security
law is likely to remain a lawyers’ pa radise’.
Stamatia Devetzí
University of Applied Sciences, Fulda
Germany.
Stamatia Devetzí is Professor of Social Security, with particular interest in the law of
social insurance. She conducts research on nation al and European social security law.
Jan Buelens and Marc Rigaux (eds.), From Social Competition to Social Dumping,
Intersentia: Cambridge, A ntwerp and Portland, 2016, 148 pp., ISBN: 978–1–78068–
352–2
e notion of ‘social dumping’ is controversial.It is closely related to t he European
Single Market and descr ibes how a low level of social protection and low labour
standards in nationa l law enables providers to o er t heir goods and serv ices at lower
costs. It is questionable whether t his is a regular consequence of the Member States’
right to regulate t heir social security systems autonomously or whether it cons titutes
illegitimate competitive advantages, giving way to a ‘race to the bottom’ in national
social security legislation. Jan Buelens and Marc R igaux have edited a collection
of papers that were presented at a symposium on ‘Social Competition and Social
Dumping’ in Antwerp in 2014. e book includes both scienti c articles and eld
studies givi ng an insight into the practica l consequences of di erent socia l standards,
which are discuss ed under the umbrella of the fundamental r ights of workers.
e rst contribution by Marc Rigaux focuses on the r ight to human dignity, which
the author regards as being enda ngered by European law. e author presents several
examples of how the Single Market has cha nged and in uenced social st andards in a
way that had not been intended. While la bour law and social secur ity law originally had
the function of counterbalancing the negative e ects of competition on the weakest
members of society, it has now become an instrument of the commodi cation of
workers by giving employers the opportu nity to hire the cheapest avai lable workforce.
Moral aspects, l ike the adequacy of the income to make ends meet, se em to be ‘lost in
competition’. e author descr ibes how this leads to social exclusion and a v iolation of
the workers’ human dignit y, since they are unable to opt out of this s ystem: it is either
‘accept bad working conditions or accept unemployment’. Although the author’s
ndings are very much to the point, the analysis is based on the assumption that
EU policy is, by de nition, neo-liberal. However, there is no homogenous concept
of neo-liberalism and the author fails to the outline its basic principles and thus to
prove t hat his a ssumpt ion is cor rect. e E U aims t o secure decent s tanda rds of liv ing
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