Purely internal situations – Fundamental freedoms – Attribution of powers – Ullens de Schooten – Reverse discrimination – Non-discriminatory obstacles – EU citizenship – Preliminary rulings – Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice – Conditions of admissibility of preliminary references

European Commission – Size of the Commission – Presidentialisation – President’s power of organisation – Principle of collegiality – Responsibility of the College at large – Reorganisation of the Commission – Balance between efficiency and member state representation – Legality of project teams – Rotation of voting rights in EU law – System of rotation for the European Commission

Treaty obligations: the EU shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and promote social justice and protection – EU institutions responses to social challenges outside of the Social Policy Title – Fragmentation of Social Policy: in many ways deeply unsatisfactory, yet useful lessons may be learnt – Social implications of economic integration – Rethinking EU intervention on the protection of individuals owing to a fundamental rights’ narrative.

Impact of fundamental rights on the social ‘acquis’ – Limited extension of social rights from the integration of the ‘acquis’ into the Charter of Fundamental Rights – How the Charter contributed to the renewed force of the economic freedoms – Shift from fundamental rights to ‘essential principles’ of uncertain nature in the European Pillar of Social Rights – Possible transformation in the approach to social issues through interdisciplinarity

EU law – Investigating the displacement of Social Europe at moments of EU enlargement – Sweden as an example of how Social Europe can be displaced – Enlargement of 1995 and austerity policy – Enlargement of 2004 and posted workers – Enlargement of 2007 and ‘vulnerable’ EU-migrants

Social and economic interests of ‘new’ and ‘old’ Member States along centre and periphery axis – Judicial and legislative developments concerning the posting of workers – Continuous deepening of the divide between centre and periphery – Lack of placement of new Member States’ social interests at the EU level – The need to place social interests firmly in the EU (internal market) structure – Developing meaningful common social standards to mitigate the centre/periphery divide

Social Europe – Case law of the Court of Justice – ‘Real’ and ‘apparent’ displacement – Court’s interpretive task more complex and contested – Directives based on ‘flexicurity’ policy – Cases in which workers have competing interests, e.g. age discrimination – Viking and Laval – Re-framing of employers’ interests as fundamental rights under Article 16 EU Charter – Declining relevance of the Court in labour law – Challenges for EU labour lawyers

Critical-contextual analysis of case law of the European Court of Justice on employers’ contractual freedom – Fundamental right to be immunised against the alleged disproportional protection enjoyed by employees – Progressive ideological overthrow of the original constitutional assumptions of the founding treaties – Prominent example of ‘displacement of social Europe’ – Court of Justice’s case law on the relationship between freedom to conduct a business and labour law – Neoliberal understanding of the freedom of enterprise – Alternative interpretation of Article 16 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

Has the European Semester led to a displacement of Social Europe, or to the development of social policy through fiscal processes and actors? – Potential for Semester to increase soft law’s binding effects or ‘socialise’ EU policy-making – Positive effects severely limited by the Semester’s overall goals: fiscal stabilisation and the creation of increasingly uniform economic policies – Dilemma for Social Europe: how can an autonomous EU social policy be (re) established without risking marginalisation?

An assessment of the ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ by reference to its constitutional significance – Potential to significantly improve the social output of the EU by addressing the displacement of the Social Policy Title of previous years – Incapacity to redress the constitutional imbalance between ‘the market’ and ‘the social’ in the EU legal order – Continuing displacement of the (national and European) legislator in the internal market and economic governance