Right to strike, transnational collective action and European law: time to move on?

Starting from an analysis of two pending cases before the ECJ (Laval and Viking case), the paper focuses on the issue of the scope and significance the EU intends to accord to collective actions within the dynamics of European integration. In the first part of the paper the author deals with the principles governing the internal market of services in order to asses whether and how the performance of collective actions might fall within the scope of Article 49 TEC. In the second part, the different solutions arising as to collective actions violating prima facie article 49 will lead to an investigation on the possibility to accommodate the exercise of the right to strike with the constraints posed by the internal market principles. In the final part of this essay the author deals with the issue of the legitimacy of the right to take collective action from a “procedural” perspective, considering the increasing influence of the deliberative theories on the debate about European governance.

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