Transnational Matters Research Articles

Are European Works Councils Ready for Brexit? An inside look

On 31 January 2020, at 23:00, the United Kingdom (UK) officially ceased to be a member of the European Union (EU). One of the many areas that will likely be directly affected with regard to workers’ rights is the organisation and functioning of European Works Councils (EWCs). EWCs are company-level institutions set up in multinational companies (MNCs) to enable the provision of information to and consultation of employees on transnational matters. This policy brief shows that: Brexit will have an immediate effect on about 14% of all EWCs because they are based on UK national law. There are also UK representatives in more than 70% of EWCs. By 2018, most UK-based EWCs had already discussed the impact of Brexit. However, almost half of the EWCs with UK representatives had not yet discussed what will happen. Of those EWCs with UK representatives, most think the UK members will remain members of the EWC, quite a few do not know, and about 16% predict that they will not remain members.

La Clef De Voûte Du Droit Judiciaire Européen : Le Règlement N ° 655/2014 Du 15 Mai 2014 Créant Une Procédure D ’ Ordonnance Européenne De Saisie Conservatoire Des Comptes Bancaires (OESC)

Regulation 655/2014 of 15 May 2014, creates a uniform procedure of attachment for bank accounts within the European Union. It has become part of a European procedural order for transnational matters. An enforcement process is thus placed alongside the litigation process, starting from an ex parte phase to a two-party appeal. The scope of application of the Regulation extends the European judicial area in a substantive and spatial direction. However, there are many references back to internal procedural law, making this extension variable in scope. Moreover, it is uncertain whether the debtor benefits from all of a defendant’s due process rights, notably if a consumer needs to exercise the right to appeal before the judge of the originating jurisdiction. In a good number of cases, it might be more convenient to obtain a judgment in a Member State and then, without exequatur, to proceed to an enforcement measure where the account is located (Article 40 Brussels Ia Regulation). The Account Preservation Regulation could nonetheless prove useful to surprise the debtor who is not yet informed about the litigation that is about to be unleashed against him.

Political liberalism and global justice

This article argues that political liberalism, of the type formulated by John Rawls and Charles Larmore and further developed in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, is superior to more comprehensive political views both in domestic and in global affairs. Perfectionist liberalism as advocated by John Stuart Mill and Joseph Raz attempts to erase existing religions and replace them with the religion of utility or autonomy. This is wrong, because in the ethico-religious environment of reasonable disagreement that we inhabit all comprehensive forms of political morality pose a threat to people's liberty and equality. Only thin and narrow conceptions of value like the ones suggested by Rawls, Larmore, Sen, and Nussbaum can guarantee the respect for diversity that is needed in a pluralistic world. Although Rawls famously failed to extend this idea from domestic to transnational matters, the argument of the article is that not only do the principles of political liberalism apply to global matters, but that the reasons why they apply to global affairs are even more compelling transnationally than they are domestically.

EU regional unemployment as a transnational matter: An analysis via the Gompertz diffusion processs

AbstractAt the end of 1990s, Danny Quah devoted several papers to the analysis of polarization and stratification in the convergence processes of economies, creating the image of the ‘convergence clubs’ and suggesting the importance of studying the distribution dynamics of the macroeconomic variables. As for the labour markets, Overman and Puga (2002) showed that a progressive polarization of unemployment was in fact occurring among the European regions in 1986–1996, causing a phenomenon of cross‐border clusterization. Here we propose to analyse the evolution of the unemployment rates of the EU 27 regions in the last two decades assuming that the unemployment rates evolve according to a Gompertz stochastic process. The estimated parameters of the process – intrinsic growth rate, deceleration factor, volatility – represent the evolutionary path of the unemployment rate and allow for estimating the steady state of the process. A cluster analysis is performed on the steady state values of the unemployment rates. The analysis confirms the emergence of several ‘convergence clubs’ among the European regional labour markets, which are compared to the clusters resulting from the more traditional clusterization on the current unemployment rates.

Updated: A master checklist for drafting contract clauses in transnational matters

AbstractJoseph T. McLaughlin and Kathleen M. Scanlon, of New York, revisit, revise and expand their checklist for drafting effective conflict resolution contract provisions in transactions that cross borders.

The Migration of Professionals: Theories and Typologies

In an historical context, highly skilled migration typically involved the forced movement of professionals as a result of political conflicts, followed by the emergence of the “brain drain” in the 1960s.In the current situation, highly skilled migration represents an increasingly large component of global migration streams. The current state of theory in relation to highly skilled migration is far from adequate in terms of explaining what is occurring at the high skill end of the migration spectrum.Continuing growth of temporary skilled migration is heralding changes in the operation of professions. Formal procedures for recognizing the skills of permanent immigrant professionals are breaking down as “fast‐track” processes for assessing the skills of temporary professional migrants are put in place. The increasing globalization of firms and the internationalization of higher education are encouraging professions to internationalize.In this article, four professions are cited as case studies to show that professional inclusion/exclusion is no longer defined by national professional bodies alone. The operation of professions has become a transnational matter although the extent of internationalization varies with professions.Typologies for analysing professional migration flows are discussed and a sixth means of categorization, by profession or industry, is introduced to allow for the nature of interactions between the market, the state and the profession/industry. The question whether states should continue to be concerned about self‐sufficiency in national professional labour markets in an increasingly globalized environment is also addressed.