VIKING, LAVAL AND ALL THAT: CONSEQUENCES OF ECJ RULINGS AND DEVELOPMENTS IN THE AREA OF INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT IN AN ENLARGED EU

The main aim of the thesis is to provide a recognition of the major consequences and potential impact of the European Court of Justice rulings in the Viking, Laval, Rüffert and Luxembourg cases dating to the late 2007-early 2008 and balancing the conflict between economic freedoms and fundamental social rights, as well as the most important judicial and legislative developments in the field of fundamental collective rights, both in various domestic settings and at EU-level. The work proceeds to reconstruct the fundamental elements in the regulation of the right to strike and collective action in Italy, Germany and the UK, as well as the development in international instruments such as ILO Conventions and the ESC, as well as the first European Community and Union approaches occurred in particular in the late '90s and with the issuing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The starting point for the analysis of the rulings is represented by the political, economic and legal context and occurrences linked with the latest rounds of the European enlargement process; focusing on the most prominent legal aspects emerging from the Court’s reasonings, an assessment of the actual and potential impact on the national regulations and industrial relation systems is carried out, with particular attention to the Swedish, German and Italian frameworks. Clarification efforts also focus on the main elements of uncertainty stemming from the rulings; furthermore, disputes taking places in some national settings and most clearly linked with the ECJ rulings (in particular Sweden and UK) are analyzed and assessed. The thesis then proceed to evaluate the most important and recent responses elaborated by social partners and EU institutions in order to reconcile the economic and social dimension of the Union, as well as the recent judicial course taken by the ECtHR with reference to the right to collective action (in the Demir and Enerji rulings), and the perspectives deriving from the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon and the planned accession of the EU to the ECHR in order to readdress the judicial course undertaken by the ECJ in the field.