Short project description
The Single Market is a centrepiece of European integration. Market integration has evolved in two directions, by territorial expansion and deepening of market integration through the increased opening up in particular of the services sector. Market integration involves processes of de- and re-regulation, both at national and EU level, and changes the conditions for labour market governance. The institutions for the regulation of work, labour markets, and social rights have been cornerstones in the national regimes of governance in Europe, not least so in the Nordic countries.
The project will study national level developments in this field, both the legal dimension as regards measures, and changes in them, concerning the transposition and application of EU legislation such as on Posting of Workers and the Services Directive, and industrial relations effects such as how market extension and EU regulations influence patterns of interest organisation, power relations, etc. The project also will analyse European regulation and its development in the field. The analysis will comprise both a substantive and a governance perspective. In the substantive perspective the main issue concerns the relationship between the economic and social aims of the EU, whereas the governance perspective is concerned with the relationship between powers at the supra-national and national level and between different powers at the same level. The project thus will study the interplay and contrasts between different national regimes ('horizontally'), which the European level regime aims at regulating, as well as the 'vertical' interaction between the European level and the various national systems. By this we aim at also elucidating the contrasts and tensions between different predominating labour law and industrial relations models in Europe and how friction between them impact on European level regulation and tension pertaining to European integration in corporative and political channels.
Principal objective and sub-goals
The principal objective and sub-goals of the FORMULA project is to study, at EU and national levels, key EU regulation pertaining to the internal market and free movement, in particular the Posted Workers Directive and the Services Directive, and interconnecting issues and processes to attain, by way of comparative and interdisciplinary approaches, deepened understanding of how interacting political, legal, socio-institutional and economic logics are influencing the interplay between the different institutions and organised actors shaping supra-national decision-making and national adjustments in the emerging multilayered European polity, with particular regard to the formation, adaptation, and application of legal regimes in the labour market. By this the project aims at also elucidating the contrasts and tensions between different predominating labour law and industrial relations models in Europe and how friction between them impact on European level regulation and tension pertaining to European integration in corporative and political channels.
See the Comprehensive description for a more extensive description of the project.