Book Review: Regulating Social Europe: Reality and Myth of Collective Bargaining

AuthorMark Bell
Date01 June 2001
Published date01 June 2001
DOI10.1177/1023263X0100800207
Subject MatterBook Review
Book Reviews
8 MJ 2 (2001) 217
A. Lo Faro, Regulating Social Europe: reality and myth of collective
bargaining, Hart Publishing 2000, 192 pages, hardback.
There is a temptation for EU lawyers to regard European collective bargaining as a
peculiarity of EU social policy, simply a reflection of a tradition well established at the
national level. Antonio Lo Faro presents a provocative reconsideration of European
collective bargaining which contests this perspective and on the contrary constructs the
procedures as essentially motivated by Community law imperatives.
This book is a theoretical analysis of EU collective bargaining processes. At its core,
two key arguments emerge in the text. First, Lo Faro convincingly locates the
bargaining procedure as a response to regulatory barriers in the EU law-making process.
The stagnation of European social policy, most especially during the 1980s, is well
documented. However, Lo Faro highlights the regulatory dilemmas arising across
diverse policy fields, including the internal market programme itself. He suggests that
the EU institutions have turned to a variety of alternative working methods to
circumvent the slow progress in legislative harmonization, such as the establishment of
agencies, or resorting to the principle of mutual recognition. Lo Faro therefore
concludes: ‘European collective bargaining is mainly intended – in the overall context
of a general redefinition of Community regulatory strategies – as one of the
Community’s potential remedies to its decision-making bottlenecks and implementation
problems in the field of labour law and social policy’ (p. 52). It is also this dimension of
the book which builds a vital link to existing literature on the EU’s regulatory deficit
and commends it to an audience wider than European labour lawyers.
Proceeding from this perspective on European collective bargaining, Lo Faro calls into
question the assumption that this can really be termed ‘collective bargaining’, given the
established understanding of this term from national bargaining experiences. In support
of this challenge, Lo Faro analyses various aspects of European bargaining which
distinguish it from ‘similar’ national phenomena. Indeed, this part of the book throws
into stark relief the underlying weaknesses of the process.
One of his fundamental criticisms of European collective bargaining is the genuine lack
of autonomy on the part of the Social Partners (p. 106). From the outset, their agenda is
curtailed by the existing limitations of Community competences. The possibility in the
EC Treaty for the Social Partners to make agreements on areas beyond the competences
of the Community is dismissed by Lo Faro as of little consequence given the absence of
any obvious mechanism through which such agreements could be enforced. Even in
those areas within the competence of the Community, Lo Faro submits that the
autonomy which underpins the agreements reached is then compromised by the
intervention of the EU institutions – the Commission as a guarantor of the legality of the
agreements, and the Council as the only body able to confer binding force on the
agreements. In this context, Lo Faro suggests that the agreements are better regarded as
‘mere interlocutory instruments serving the purposes of a more readily effective

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT