A Comparative Framing of Fundamental Rights Challenges to Social Crisis Measures in the Eurozone

Claire Kilpatrick 

European University Institute - Department of Law (LAW)

Bruno De Witte 

European University Institute - Department of Law (LAW)
November 1, 2014

SIEPS European Policy Analysis, November 2014 
Abstract:      

The Eurozone crisis and its management prompted dramatic changes to social rights and entitlements, specifically in the Member States which were most severely affected by the economic downturn. Fundamental rights, including fundamental social rights, from different sources can be a means to contest those crisis-imposed changes to social rights. The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative framing of fundamental rights challenges to social crisis measures in the Eurozone. The paper examines the decline in social rights, broadly defined, in a number of Eurozone Member States intensely affected by the crisis, and analyses the content, location and background of fundamental rights' challenges made to crisis-imposed changes to work and welfare rights in those States. The analysis prompts difficult yet central questions of the role of the EU as a human rights actor, the attitudes of courts in fundamental rights cases, as well as the significance of the Charter as a guarantor of fundamental social rights in the EU.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 12

Full text available: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2535267