In recent years, legal scholars have dismantled influential economic accounts of the private nature of money, demonstrating that money is better understood as a ‘governance project’ and a public resource that is created and regulated by the state. Legal theories of money could lend support to the ECB’s recent use of ‘unorthodox’ monetary policy to stabilise the euro, and could further support proposals for the innovative use of monetary policy to combat inequality. However, legal writing on money to date has primarily sought to challenge neoclassical economics – a body of thought that denies the impact that distributions of credit by the state play in shaping processes of value formation in the economy. Two further dimensions of the nature of money have received less attention from legal scholars to date: first, the question of how money comes to have an economic value (an important component of ‘moneyness’), and, second, how the international functions of credit money as currency in international trade and finance may limit the capacities of governments to manage money differently. In this article, I offer a revised account of the legal nature of money that is more attentive to the transnational nature of the legal regimes and institutions that enable the production of sovereign credit monies in the contemporary global political economy. My analysis complicates both the suggestion that the ECB can address inequality in the eurozone by means of unorthodox monetary policy and the widely made counter-argument that the only solution to the constitutional crisis in the European Union (EU) is the creation of a political sovereign imbued with stronger fiscal powers. I find that unless the current transnational legal arrangements that enable the production and governance of money are addressed, no states will be able to act as ‘centralised and legitimate political authorities’ that can control capitalist credit money in accordance with democratic imperatives.

What role does the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) play in holding European Union (EU) regulatory science, ie the science underpinning public regulation, to account for its epistemic quality? Since Pfizer, CJEU case law has strengthened the role of science in both EU risk regulation and litigation, whilst intensifying judicial scrutiny of scientific reasoning based on procedural standards. Scholars often welcome this approach as striking an adequate balance between effective judicial protection and institutional competence. Some praise the Court as an ‘information catalyst’ promoting procedures, in which epistemic quality is ensured through diligent consideration of and deliberation among all relevant voices. These debates, however, overlook the role of economic actors as information providers, in and challengers of EU risk regulation. This paper re-evaluates the modern post-Pfizer approach from a new, socio-legal perspective by studying, for the first time, the interactions between judicial review and the epistemic power of economic actors, ie their relative ability to influence what EU regulators know at the expense of other actors. We combine an epistemologically informed comparative institutional analysis with doctrinal critique of CJEU case law. Our findings show the need to rethink both legal standing and procedural review in EU risk regulation. Instead of catalysing inclusive procedures that open regulatory science to public scrutiny, the modern approach fosters an exclusive bilateral information exchange between the administration and the regulated industry. The Court reduces the function of process values, such as duty of care and reason-giving, to the protection of a small circle of actors, neglecting the public interest dimension of such values. Thus, the modern approach fails to address, and instead further entrenches the epistemic power imbalances inherent in EU risk regulation. We end by sketching out a normative and doctrinally sound vision of how CJEU review could contribute to EU expert accountability in a more publicly oriented way.

Orders are judicial decisions designed to shore up fair and timely resolution of disputes. As written, detailed, and factual documents, they are reliable markers of procedural steps and a unique source of information about the inner working of an institution. This article examines all published orders of the European Court of Justice, drawing lessons from their use. The analysis demonstrates that the pursuit of efficiency and uniform application blurs the lines between the administration and judging. First, it centralises the institution, expanding the duties of the Registry and amplifying the role of the Cabinet of the President of the Court. Second, it bureaucratises the interpretation and the uniform application of European Union law. These processes are common in judicial institutions with no power over their dockets. But the particular European response, authored by the Court, also suggests its reluctance to forfeit the interpretive monopoly.

This article revisits the present and future of the direct effect principle and submits solutions for its appropriate understanding and enforcement. Once the topic has been put into context and it has been shown why direct effect is an evolving notion whose scope goes beyond the Van Gend & Loos judgement and the doctrine originating from it, the study presents five intertwined arguments. First, direct effect has two facets since, aside from a subjective-substitutive form of direct effect, there exists an objective-oppositive manifestation of direct effect, whereby a directly effective European Union (EU) provision entails the disapplication of national law, without either conferring immediately an individual right or replacing the domestic norm in governing the case at hand. Second, the article claims that the obligation to disapply is triggered always by primacy and direct effect, never by primacy alone. In fact, justifying disapplication on the basis only of the primacy principle and not on primacy and direct effect is likely to undermine the logic implied in the relationship between the EU legal order and domestic legal systems. Third, there are legitimate derogations from the obligation to immediately disapply a conflicting domestic provision with EU law endowed with direct effect in so far as they are admitted by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the condition that the replacement of a national provision by an EU norm may harm individual rights and/or question the national identity clause enshrined in Article 4(2) Treaty on European Union (TEU). Fourth, the test on clarity, precision and unconditionality for assessing whether an EU norm is directly effective, as it was conceived by the CJEU, is no longer a pillar in the conceptualisation and practice of direct effect. As a matter of fact, only unconditionality, in practice, proves to be the core element of direct effect. Moreover, direct effect and direct applicability are equivalent concepts since unconditionality, as the condicio sine qua non of direct effect, coincides with direct applicability. Fifth, a distinctive quality of direct effect, along with unconditionality, is the creation of an advantage resulting from the application of EU law and the subsequent disapplication of national law. This implies that an EU directly effective provision can never be only in malam partem (ie, detrimental for the individual) and thus disapplication, lacking the existence of an advantage for the individual, shall never come into play. The article concludes that the duty to refine the doctrine of direct effect must be performed, ultimately, by the CJEU. Indeed, only the CJEU can offer guidance to national authorities, since it has an interpretive monopoly on the ifs, whens and hows of direct effect. To this end, it is vital that the EU judges, by rejecting argumentative minimalism brought to its extreme, come to reassert their constitutional role and re-establish the common core of the EU system, beginning with the principles that created and shaped it.

This work aims to investigate the stance of the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC) on ECHR and CFREU and their respective Courts, ECtHR and CJEU. The aim is to verify if the attitude of the ItCC could be described in terms of openness or closedness, understanding openness as an effort to practise loyal cooperation through procedural means and, substantively, as greater attention for the norms of supranational orders, and closedness as the setting aside of all forms of procedural ties with the supranational Courts and the voluntary dissociation from their outcome, with the purpose of prioritising domestic constitutional provisions. To conduct the analysis, the article refers to the theory of interlegality, questioning whether ItCC, operating ‘on the borders between several normative orders’, has a broader accountability to these different orders. The first part of the paper is devoted to some elements drawn from the case law indicating openness, such as the language use by the ItCC, the procedures, the legal reasoning, and the effects of judgements. Attention is given to the contextual reference to the recognition norms of both the Italian Constitution and European Union (EU) Treaties and to the increasing use of preliminary rulings to the CJEU. The second part of the paper discusses a substantive criterion created by the ItCC, the ‘greatest extension of guarantees’, demonstrating that it does not refer to the level of protection of individual rights, but to the balance of the entire constitutional system. Our conclusion is that the ItCC trends concerning supranational rights express a deferent and operational, but vigilant cooperation, retaining a margin to ensure the vitality of the domestic Constitution.

The article offers a brief account of the continental European (viz., German) and the US American approach to legal education and scholarship. It then explores in which respect legal academics active in these cultures are vulnerable to the lure of commodification, that is, incentives to produce legal expertise for clients. After concluding that these incentives may well be stronger in countries where legal academics consider themselves badly paid and where scholarly traditions are weak, the article explores how commodification can adversely affect the culture of ‘legal science’ as a whole and even work to the detriment of clients.

The wish from 24 February 2022 onwards to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression has led to the provision of unprecedented lethal European Union (EU) military assistance. As the ‘taboo’ of supplying lethal assistance into non-EU conflicts is swept aside, what is the role of international arms control law? The legal requirements of the EU Common Position on arms exports and the Arms Trade Treaty compel EU Member States to assess various short- and long-term risks associated with arms exports. But it is unclear how arms control norms are being taken into account by the EU Council in its rapidly evolving role as a peacemaker.

The standards that are being used to shape EU decision-making on Ukraine matter both for their precedent-setting as reflecting the trajectory of EU normative power, as well as on the long-term blowbacks of proliferation on illicit arms trafficking. While from the EU Council, there has been limited public articulation of these risks, greater consideration thereof would serve as a reminder of the reality of post-conflict arms proliferation, ie. illicit arms trafficking of weapons leached from the conflict, and their subsequent misuse by undesirable actors. Geostrategic precedent is being set, with implications that extend far beyond Ukraine, including to other conflicts where the EU is already intervening. The EU’s delivering of massive lethal military assistance alters also the reflexive perception of its institutions.

The introductory article sets out the background and the content of the Symposium on ‘Law and the Production of Precarious Work in Europe’. The analysis builds on the premise that European (EU) law, together with international and national law, is constitutive of precarious forms of work and work relations in different national and local contexts. The Symposium takes issue with the specific legal frameworks and regimes that are related to structuring various forms of precarious and exploitable labour, by exploring how (EU) law orders the world of work through legal regimes and regulatory frameworks governing specific forms of labour mobility across borders, as well as by looking at the other components of the structures and institutional interactions underlying the broader political economy where precarious forms of work materialise.

Since the 2018 revision of the Posting of Workers Directive, the debate on posting has once again been heated. The spark comes particularly from disputes concerning cross-border mobility of highly mobile workers employed in transnational logistics services (Dobersberger, FNV, Rapidsped, and to a different extent Gruber and Samidani and AFMB). In this set of case law, the Court of Justice of the EU had to consider whether or not, and to what extent, the workers in question should be considered posted workers. Thus, the case law came to revolve around the spatial and territorial attributes, and the cross-border nature of the work performed. By resorting to the analytical tools provided by legal geography, and in particular to the concept of ‘chronotopes of law’ elaborated by Mariana Valverde, the aim of this piece is to reflect upon assumptions and implications of the aforementioned rulings with a view of discussing both structural and contingent elements that possibly favour exploitation of posted work in the transnational logistics industry.

This article unpacks some severe forms of exploitation of workers, resulting from the use of free provision of services for purposes that it was not intended to fulfil, under internal market law. It explores how this evolution of posting relates to the existence of a market resting only on the international assignment of workers, and proposes that the European Union (EU) takes steps to limit or prohibit assignment of labour, especially in the sectors (agriculture, meat sector, construction) where posting of workers, as some recent cases show, leads to extreme forms of exploitation that can be tagged as slavery.

In 2014, the European Union adopted the Seasonal Workers Directive to achieve a twofold aim: meeting employers’ demand for flexible and cheap labour and enhancing protection for third-country national (TCN) workers. Especially Article 23, the equal treatment provision, triggered a cautious optimism among scholars and trade unions, which looked at the Directive as a source of increased protection for seasonal workers. However, trade unions also pointed out the limited reach of the Directive, criticising its lack of commitment and ambition. Over the years, and especially during the Covid pandemic, it became clear that the Seasonal Workers Directive did not represent a game-changer for TCN seasonal workers, whose increased protections remained true only on paper. This contribution draws on the case of Italy during the pandemic to understand the reasons for the Directive’s limited impact. The article critically examines the different political tensions underpinning the adoption of the Directive, to better understand why the Directive is not applied in practice and how it impacts the labour market and migrants’ social conditions.

Seasonal migrants’ exploitation in Europe, especially in agriculture, is often seen as having its origins in failure of migration or labour policies. Indeed, the virtual impossibility to enter a country as a regular non-European Union (EU) worker coupled with the needs of agricultural work, requiring low-skilled workforce and short time notice for recruitment, generates a perfect environment for exploitation and the related phenomenon of gangmastering. However, work exploitation in agriculture is nowadays a structural problem, requiring structural changes in the way food is produced and intended by the agri-food supply chain as a whole. Indeed, a truly preventative approach needs not only to protect seasonal migrants from human rights violations, but also to involve agribusiness in tackling the root causes of migrants’ exploitation. Building on international standards on business and human rights, the aim of this contribution is to propose a more holistic view of the phenomenon workers exploitation in agriculture. Recent European policies seem to have understood this need, calling enterprises and farmers to bear their responsibility by introducing an accountability discourse for the agribusiness and the food supply chain, either indirectly or directly. The new social conditionality clause in the Common Agricultural Policy, the Directive on Unfair Practices in Agriculture and the recent Commission proposal for a Directive on mandatory human rights due diligence should therefore be read in conjunction with major developments in international law that call for the responsibility of powerful private actors operating in agri-food sector.

This article discusses the United Kingdom (UK) 2019 Seasonal Worker Visa, which was adopted to address labour shortages in horticulture. It explains the challenges faced by workers in agriculture more broadly, and the particular issues raised by seasonal visas. It argues that the UK scheme contains significant restrictions on workers’ rights. The article situates this scheme in a framework of ‘state-mediated structures of injustice’, namely instances where legal rules with an appearance of legitimacy create or increase vulnerability and are connected to widespread structures of exploitation. This theoretical framework focuses on the role and responsibility of the state for workers’ exploitation. The authorities have political responsibility to change these rules, and may also have legal responsibility to do so under human rights law.

The end of free movement as a consequence of the United Kingdom (UK)’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) meant that it was necessary for the UK to devise a new migration system when the transition period came to an end. One aim of this article is to determine in what respects the new system, which came into force on 1 January 2021, draws on or differs from the previous immigration system. To the extent that this inquiry reveals some similarities, another aim is to uncover how the policymaking process produced these continuities. Drawing on the concept of path dependency from the ‘new institutionalism’ literature, the analysis reveals that two critical decisions taken by the New Labour government (1997–2010) set in train a path dependent policy process that has shaped immigration law and policy today. Two mechanisms of path dependency are identified. First, there were continuities in the operation of conceptual frameworks, methodologies and conclusions amongst organisations tasked with designing the new immigration system. Second, the position adopted by employing enterprises favoured the retention of key features of the previous system.

The focus of the present contribution is the role of European Union (EU) law in shaping the working conditions of four groups of vulnerable workers. It assesses to what extent the impact of EU law favours, on these particular groups, an increased risk of In-Work Poverty (IWP) and explores whether the recent attention to IWP at EU level and the latest initiatives adopted may change the picture in the near future. The purpose is, therefore, to contribute to the debate on the role of EU law and policy in structuring vulnerability from the perspective of IWP. What is commonly known as EU labour law is a fragmentary legal corpus that has grown in a rather patchwork fashion as part of a social dimension of the European project that was, broadly speaking, functional to the logic of market integration. This originates in the early division of competences between the EU and the Member States in the Treaty of Rome, which left labour law and social protection outside the EU sphere of action. It partly explains why the protection of workers, particularly those that do not engage in cross-border situations, does not seem to be the EU’s primary goal, or at least it is not formulated as contrary to other potentially clashing rationales such as market integration, flexibility, enhanced competitiveness and so on. The prevention of IWP was not, in any case, one of the concerns of the original European project. Yet, EU law has produced several pieces of legislation that directly or indirectly contribute to shaping the working conditions of European workers, including those more exposed to IWP. The paper assesses the relevant EU legal framework and discusses its impact on the working conditions of those more at risk of IWP. It concludes by estimating the potential of a series of recent initiatives to enhance the protection of the most vulnerable workers, thus making a positive change.