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The right to take collective action in EU law based on the European Pillar of Social Rights and the recent case law of the CJEU
9-24Views:414This paper is built around the workers’ fundamental right to take collective action and collective bargaining. Although, this right is firmly embedded in the majority of labour law systems in the social policy (meaning labour law, too) of the European Union, it is worth analysing it separately with an independent meaning. We can approach this right from the fundamental rights, the fundamental treaties or from certain directives, so we can find several questions that are difficult to answer properly. These problems are mostly catalysed by the necessary collision between the need for socially motivated legal protection and the fundamental economic freedoms. In my research, I analyse this right – along with some other connected ones – with the help of the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Pillar of Social Rights because the latter highlights the holistic approach in the current reforms of EU social policy.
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Balancing Work and Life: New Developments in the Field of Legal Protection of Workers
25-44Views:331The present study deals with the current labour law questions of balancing work and private life. The topicality of the study is supported by Directive (EU) 2019/1158 which, built on the existing legislative basis, brings several novelties in this regulative area refreshing the key elements of the criteria of equal employment referring to the employees raising children. The researched regulation fits into the high level, socially motivated; worker-protection Directive designated by the European Pillar of Social Rights, consequently, this aspect also plays a role in elaboration. In my analysis, I concentrate on the regulative background, subject of the new Directive, as well as its connection to fundamental social rights and the new norms describing the potentially strengthening legal protection of workers. I draw conclusions based on their synthesis about the predictable future effects of the new regulation.
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The Protection of Fundamental Rights of People with Disabilities and Reduced Capacity to Work Using Social Farm Services
83-100Views:309The present study examines the fundamental rights of disabled people using the service of social farms – especially people with disabilities and with reduced capacity to work. These rights are essential for these people in order to ensure their employment. These people are often cut off from the labour market, moreover, they cannot be present there. Therefore, fundamental rights ensured within the Fundamental Law of Hungary play a significant role for treating and employing them equally. Labour law and social law protection confirms this constitutional protection.
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Book Review of Szilvia Váradi's "Data Protection in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
Views:304The review presents Szilvia Váradi’s monograph "Data Protection in the Age of Artificial Intelligence", the first comprehensive work on the subject in Hungarian. One of the book’s major strengths is that it guides the reader from the introduction of technological foundations to the detailed analysis of legal and data protection issues, with particular emphasis on the relevance of the GDPR and the AI Act. Váradi situates the significance of AI not only within a legal, but also within a social and economic context, underlining the urgency of regulation. The book clearly explains the data protection challenges of machine learning and large language models, highlighting problems of transparency and accountability. From a critical perspective, the detailed technological background may at times appear encyclopedic, yet this broader perspective provides a valuable basis for interdisciplinary approaches. The review concludes that the book is both a pioneering and a guiding work, serving the needs of professionals as well as a wider readership.
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The Importance of the Wage Guarantee Fund in the Framework of Labour Law Protection
177-192Views:331Act LXVI of 1994 on the Wage Guarantee Fund and the guarantee system regulated by it, is especially topical nowadays, as more and more employers in Hungary have become insolvent in connection with the crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic. In many cases, the employers subject to the procedure are not able to meet their wage obligations to their employees, so the state must guarantee the values that can be expressed in exact monetary terms – the work performed and its financial compensation – and at the same time the social security of employees. In the present study, we examine the applicability of the Wage Guarantee Fund, which serves to cover the wages to be paid by insolvent employers, from the perspective of the social security and the enforcement of employees’ claims.
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Social Dumping in the Face of Cross-border Collective Agreements and Actions: A Dilemma of the European Legal Practice on the Edge of Law and Economy in the Light of the Framework of International Standards
180-202Views:342In this paper I outline the objectives of the ILO, the conventions relevant to collective bargaining and action, and furthermore the pronouncements of the ILO supervisory bodies. After describing social dumping I examine the jurisprudence of the European Union regarding the collision of fundamental freedoms and collective labour rights in the light of international labour standards. My observation is that the hierarchical relationship between fundamental freedoms and labour rights in favour of the former cannot be maintained even based on EU law.
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The right to strike in the case-law of the ECtHR
115-133Views:340The right to strike has been long recognized as an important labour right in the European countries protected by constitutions and international conventions on labour and social rights. However, these international conventions mainly contain mere declarations to only pursue the right to strike and do not have an effective protection mechanism. Nevertheless, in the last few decades a human rights perspective on labour law gained ground and thus international organizations and international courts started to derive labour rights like the right to strike from civil and political rights and therefore some of these labour rights enjoy the same level of protection as the first generation human rights. In its recent judgements, the European Court of Human Rights stated that the right to strike is protected under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and developed a case law on the requirements of a lawful strike action, secondary strike actions and the restrictions of the right to strike.
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Challenges of Sustainable Employment
111-128Views:469When the Green Deal says we need to rethink policies for clean energy (see economy, industry, production and consumption, large-scale infrastructure, transport, food and agriculture, construction, tax policy, social benefits) what does this really mean for employment? What would it mean for the world of work if employment were to focus on sustainability, climate protection and the common interests of society? What changes would a shift to a greener economy bring about in the labour market? How would it affect already vulnerable groups of workers? One possible answer to these questions already exists: green work, which is the subject of this study.
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Higher Level Prevention as Public Value in Competition Law
133-152Views:235The problem-solving mechanism developed by Sparrow in the field of social regulation could also be implemented in competition law in order to prevent the recurrence of competition problems in a given industry. Competition authorities’ (like protection-type agencies) aim is the creation of public value. This is measured in terms of their ability to solve social problems by preventing or controlling harms. In the case of competition authorities, the public value is achieved by ensuring a competitive market environment through the curtailment of market power and the removal of barriers to entry. The public value of prevention is especially important when markets tend to become concentrated. In order to achieve the maximum preventive effect, all prevention tools must be operated effectively. This includes imposing structural remedies or switching to ex-ante prevention (regulation) when ex-post enforcement proves ineffective.
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Paradigm shift in management of enviromental problems: The ecosystem services concept and its legal aspects
98-113Views:273The majority of global environmental problems has remained unresolved mostly due to inadequate communication between natural and social sciences. This paper reviews the origin of the ecosystem services concept and presents the main valuation methods and emergence of that in legal terminology. The concept has ecological and economical roots thus can bridge environmental protection and development needs. It is clear that valuation and integration in decision-making of these essential ecological processes is one of the recent greatest scientific challenges.
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Fundamental Sources of Working Time Organisation from a Historical Perspective: Status or Contract?
39-59Views:220The concepts of status and contract are well-established and frequently used analytical categories of good explanatory power in classical and contemporary international labour law literature. Since the interpretation of these concepts varies from era to era and from author to author, recent Hungarian legal literature has paid little attention to the interpretation of legal developments along this theoretical framework, although it could serve as an effective reference point for grasping the trends of existing law. This paper attempts to apply these concepts to describe the regulatory trends in a volatile and conflictual area of law, namely working time.
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Legal interpretation issues regarding the status of the trade unions
79-95Views:797The unique purpose and role of trade unions is the protection of the employees’ social and economic interests. As compared to the previous concept, the applicable labour code introduced a conceptually new approach with respect to collective labour law, including the purpose of trade unions, reducing the trade unions’ rights to such a minimum level which shall be generally granted for a civil organization operating in the interest of a certain purpose. In my study, some legal interpretation questions –without the ambition to be exhaustive – that arise in practice come under analysis, which highlight in a crystal clear manner the question as to what sort of practical issues are raised and interpretation possibilities are opened by certain items of the Hungarian labour law regulation in connection with the legal status of the trade unions and the exercise of their rights.