Sinds de invoering van de WAMCA dient iedere claimorganisatie voldoende representatief te zijn, wil zij ontvankelijk zijn in haar collectieve actie. Het is onduidelijk wat het representativiteitsvereiste inhoudt en wat de toegevoegde waarde daarvan is. Bovendien kan een strikte toepassing van dit vereiste de doelstellingen van de collectieve actie ondermijnen.

In this article we introduce the main principles of the Polish dismissal protection regulation. Issues addressed include the underlying principles for the system of dismissal protection, notice periods, justifiable reasons for dismissal, consultation of trade unions and how to remedy unfair or defective dismissals. We also very briefly touch upon dismissal protection of civil servants.

Various of our academic board analysed employment law cases from last year.

It does not follow from EU law that a national court must disapply national provisions on minimum tariffs for architects and engineers which are contrary to Directive 2006/123, although this can follow from other national provisions. Moreover, the disadvantaged party can claim compensation based on state liability as the German implementation legislation is not in conformity with EU law.

The Danish Ministry of Employment has been held liable for a protracted legislative process following the ECJ’s ruling in the Ole Andersen case (C-499/08), which concluded that the Salaried Employees Act was not compliant with Directive 2000/78/EC concerning equal treatment in employment and occupation (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of age).

The Supreme Court has decided that the summary dismissal of an employee for violating a Covid-19 quarantine order by appearing at work is effective and justified.

On 1 December 2021, just prior to the transposition deadline for Directive (EU) 2019/1937 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law (the ‘Whistleblowing Directive’), the Irish Supreme Court delivered a judgment that may have an impact on the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Bill, the piece of legislation intended to be enacted in order to comply with the Whistleblowing Directive. The judgment noted that, while the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament) had envisaged that most complaints for which whistleblower protection would be sought would concern matters of public interest, the actual definition of ‘protected disclosure’ in the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 (the ‘2014 Act’) extends further than that and can cover complaints in the context of employment which are personal to the reporting person. While Ireland has missed the deadline and has yet to enact the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Bill, one of the intended amendments has been changed since this judgment was delivered.

The German Federal Labour Court has held that where a job-filling procedure disregards mandatory procedural and/or promotional obligations in favour of severely disabled persons, this results in the presumption that an unsuccessful severely disabled applicant had not been considered in the procedure and hence had been disadvantaged on account of their severe disability. In the case at hand the severely disabled job applicant was entitled to compensation for non-pecuniary damage.

Working as a rider for the Deliveroo platform is a professional activity that can be performed as a self-employed worker, the Labour Tribunal of Brussels has decided, which also ruled out the possibility of Deliveroo riders enjoying the fiscally beneficial status available for workers active on electronic platforms of the collaborative economy (or ‘sharing economy’).

In its judgment of 25 November 2021, the Belgian Constitutional Court has upheld the obligation to call on recognised dock workers for the activity consisting of preparing trailers on a dock for shipment with a vehicle specifically intended for that purpose (known as a ‘tugmaster tractor’). The obligation to rely solely on recognised dock workers for the performance of port work is justified, among other things, by the need to improve safety in port areas and to prevent accidents at work. The identical treatment of, on the one hand, the loading and unloading of ships in the strict sense and, on the other hand, the activity of preparing trailers on a dock for shipment with a tugmaster tractor, does not breach the principle of equality and non-discrimination. Therefore, equal treatment of both types of port labour, with regard to the obligation to call on recognised dock workers, is reasonably justified.

No sufficiently compelling reason justifying retrospective application of a law determining the substance of pensions disputes in pending proceedings.

Het onderhavige arrest betreft de eerste keer dat de zoekmachine van Google door de Unierechter mededingingsrechtelijk wordt beoordeeld. Het Gerecht oordeelt dat Google, door haar eigen productvergelijkingsdienst te bevoordelen en die van concurrenten te benadelen, misbruik van haar machtspositie heeft gemaakt. Het arrest bevat belangrijke verduidelijkingen over het begrip ‘mededinging op basis van verdienste’, de Bronner-rechtspraak, en mededingingsbeperkende gevolgen. Ook merkt het arrest de zoekmachine van Google aan als een quasi-essentiële faciliteit. Gerecht 10 november 2021, T-612/17, ECLI:EU:T:2021:763 (Google Shopping).

Dit artikel betreft een historisch-juridische beschouwing over de overeenkomsten en verschillen tussen begrotingswetgeving en reguliere wetgeving. Daarbij wordt de vraag behandeld of begrotingswetten mogen worden gebruikt om bepalingen uit niet-begrotingswetten te wijzigen. De Afdeling advisering van de Raad van State heeft sinds 2006 een bestendige lijn: dit mag niet. De posities van de regering en de Staten-Generaal worden onder de loep genomen. In de conclusie wordt een suggestie gedaan om de lijn van de Afdeling advisering te nuanceren.

The subject of this article is constitutional transformations in Sub-Saharan Africa upon and after the region’s encounter with the third wave of democratization in Africa (TWD) that took place between 1989 and 1994. Since failure in democratic rule in the region was associated with the ease with which political elites amended formal constitutions to subvert democracy, anti-authoritarian factions perceived the solution to the problems bedevilling democratic governance in Africa to lie in formal constitutional rewriting. Hence, virtually all countries ventured into constitutional change – amendment or substitution – in the early 1990s. Inasmuch as different countries changed different formal aspects of their constitutions, they largely recognized multiparty democracy and obliterated the hitherto formulations that either allowed or endorsed single-party political regimes. Yet, on the ground different transitional outcomes were achieved, with a majority of countries either failing to transform at all from de facto authoritarianism or simply making partial transitions into semi-authoritarian or rather hybrid regimes. Using Cameroon, Kenya and Benin, this article contends that disestablishment of authoritarian rule depends on certain enabling factors, which seem to go beyond textual formulation and which may account for both the present conditions of these countries and the different transitional outcomes that were realized after these countries changed their formal constitutions in the early 1990s.

In deze bijdrage worden twee recente uitspraken van respectievelijk de Conseil constitutionnel en de Franse Conseil d’État besproken. Daarin ontwikkelt zich de Franse benadering van de constitutionele grenzen van doorwerking van EU-recht verder. Voor de toetsingsbevoegdheid van de rechter staat het antwoord op de vraag, of de constitutionele waarden en beginselen die deel uitmaken van de Franse identiteit bescherming vinden in het EU-recht, bepalend. In de besproken zaken wordt voor het eerst daadwerkelijk overgegaan tot toetsing, en wel – enigszins verrassend – van constitutionele beginselen die betrekking hebben op het statelijk geweldsmonopolie. Een vergelijking van de Franse republikeinse opvatting van het geweldsmonopolie met tegenwoordige Nederlandse opvattingen leert dat de laatste sneller een verschuiving van het geweldsmonopolie naar de Europese Unie daadwerkelijk zal toelaten, dan naar Franse constitutionele opvatting mogelijk is.