Book review: The European Social Charter and the Employment Relation
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262718760912 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
Niklas Bruun, Klaus Lo
¨rcher, Isabelle Scho
¨man and Stefan Clauwaert (eds.), The European Social
Charter and the Employment Relation, Hart Publishing, 2017, 552 pages, ISBN: 978-1-50990-632 -1
(hardcover).
Reviewed by: Primoz
ˇRataj, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
DOI: 10.1177/1388262718760912
The European Social Charter and the Employment Relation comprises a collection of papers that
assesses the potential of the European Social Charter (Charter) for promoting and safeguarding
social rights in Europe as a whole and, in particular, in the European Union. This is achieved in
several ways, for instance by making the Charter more widely known in legal circles and affording
the Charter greater visibility. Additionally, the book seeks to become part of the growing legal
debate about the Charter; to explore the relationship between Charter articles and other interna-
tional human rights instruments; to strengthen the impact of the Charter on Europe’s fundamental
rights architecture; and lastly, to provide guidance to practitioners on how to make use of the
Charter when defending social rights in legal proceedings or in social dial ogue. The authors’
intention is to achieve these goals by providing readers with a comprehensive commentary on the
Charter’s fundamental rights that are directly related to the employment relation(s).
From a development perspective, the book follows up on the publication The European Con-
vention on Human Rights and The Employment Relation (2013) which it takes as a reference point.
This is reflected not only in its title, but also in the overall approach to analysing a European human
rights instrument in relation to employment. The book under review appears after a little more than
fifty years of experience with the Charter, which ‘constitutes an adequate period for assessing its
background, content and impact’ (p. 512). Moreover, considering the recent period of economic
recession, which severely restricted the scope of social rights at national level, the timing of this
publication is particularly appropr iate. In this connection, the book tak es account of the vast
jurisprudence of the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) to ‘demonstrate the crucial
but difficult role of the Charter’s supervisory bodies to secure the respect and promotion of social
rights at the national level’ (foreword). From the authors’ perspective, such an analysis is crucial
‘in the light of predominantly economic vision of Europe’ (foreword).
Drawing on the expertise of the members of the Transnational Trade Union Rights Experts
Network (TTUR), an independent expert research network attached to the European Trade Union
Institute (ETUI), the book consists of 24 papers from 15 authors ranging from Professors of Law at
universities in various Member States to the Head of the Department of the Charter and Executive
Secretary of the ECSR, Senior Researchers at ETUI, Former Legal Adviser to ETUC and a PhD
European Journal of Social Security
2018, Vol. 20(1) 68–78
ªThe Author(s) 2018
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