The accession by the European Union to the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR) has opened up new possibilities in terms of the constitutional
recognition of fundamental rights in the EU. In the field of employment law it
heralds a new procedure for workers and trade unions to challenge EU law
against the background of the ECHR. In theoretical terms this means that EU law
now goes beyond recognition of fundamental rights as mere general principles of
EU law, making the ECHR the 'gold standard' for fundamental (social) rights.
This publication of the Transnational Trade Union Rights Working Group
focuses on the EU and the interplay between the Strasbourg case law and the
case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), analysing the
relevance of the ECHR for the protection of workers' rights and for the
effective enjoyment of civil and political rights in the employment relation.
Each chapter is written by a prominent European human rights expert and
analyses the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and also
looks at the equivalent international labour standards within the Council of
Europe (in particular the (Revised) European Social Charter), the International
Labour Organization (ILO) (in particular the fundamental rights conventions)
and the UN Covenants (in particular the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights) and the interpretation of these instruments by
competent organs.
The authors also analyse the ways in which the CJEU has acknowledged the
respective ECHR articles as 'general principles' of EU law and asks whether the
Lisbon Treaty will also warrant a reassessment of the way it has treated
conflicts between these 'general principles' and the so-called 'fundamental
freedoms'.
