The Horizontal Penetration of Social Norms

Researchers have traditionally concentrated on the degree to which social welfare provisions from international treaties penetrate into national legal systems. Given the increasing reluctance of Western countries to include mandatory social provisions in international treaties, some attention is due to the question whether the desired social improvements should not partly be achieved in another form. One possibility is research on fundamental social rights in the various member states and prospective member states of the EU, and possibly also in the member states of the Council of Europe, or the international Labor Organization, and how these rights are accommodated in the national systems. A comparison of the legislation providing for corresponding fundamental social rights is a research method highly suited to this project. An investigation of the development of law in this field, and analysis of the differences and correspondences will yield research material on which new proposals can be based on increasing the level of social protection in the relevant member states. This approach is particularly well suited to the current EU strategy in the field of social rights, which can be described as 'copying other people's good ideas'.
This project section can be seen as a continuation of project section 4.3.1. It also follows on from the Ph.D. projects mentioned above, from the Ph.D.-project completed in 1999 by F.M.S. Wienk (concerning coordination of supplementary pension systems in EU member states) and also from Ms Van Lent's doctoral thesis on the way in which labor law in the corporate context is taking shape in a number of member states.