Minimum Harmonisation and Article 16 CFR: Difficult Times Ahead for Social Legislation?

Abstract

Two years later, as other contributions in this volume show, it still seems worth discussing Alemo-Herron. The case was a particularly bad surprise for those who had been more favourably impressed by previous decisions such as Aziz or Morcillo, in which the Court of Justice seemed inspired by the Charter of Fundamental Rights to grant relief to people being crudely hit by the economic crisis. Alemo-Herron seems to indicate a different path, providing the application of EU fundamental rights to private law questions with a somewhat bitter aftertaste. We argue that Alemo Herron is a problematic decision in two fundamental ways: first, it discounts the constitutional meaning of minimum harmonisation and second, it grants a thick partial meaning to article 16 CFR.