Social Rights between Hard Law and Soft Law. A case study from European Union

Abstract

After the Lisbon Summit of 2009, the whole matter of fundamental rights in the European Union has taken a new connotation. Local economic interests and social protests – in opposition to the “neoliberal agenda” of EU institutions – have played an important role in stopping the enforcement of the “Constitutional Treaty” and boosted an anti-Euro mobilization. In the meanwhile, the European bodies and transnational corporations have continued to settle a new and alternative basis for the integration. A radical shift can be observed, from the research of synthetic set of principles – as those established on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights – to a deeply technical and detailed normative production. The regulation on safety and healthy workplaces is one of the best point of view to study this change. Far from calling into question the unbalanced positions between the parties in contemporary labour relationships, the European strategy for workers’ protection move through procedural issues and voluntary obedience to the soft law instruments. In the past, the legal doctrine described the creation of a multilevel architecture of institutions, sometimes implemented in a top-down approach. Along with this, recently, it was implemented the establishment of common organizational standards associated to a specific system of corporate governance to pursue a better integration between business and fundamental rights.