Working Environment and ‘Soft Law’ in the Post‐Communist New Member States*

Charles Woolfson

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2006, vol. 44, issue 1, 195-215

Abstract: Current, admittedly incomplete evidence, suggests a deteriorating working environment in the new Member States of central and eastern Europe. Moreover, support for occupational health and safety regulation concerning the working environment appears to be limited among business and political elites in the new Member States. This has created a lack of policy ‘reform fit’ between the ‘social dimension’ of a European social model and domestic agendas dominated by more ‘business‐friendly’ free market considerations. The European Commission has also currently adopted ‘deregulationary’ assumptions concerning the need to ‘simplify’ the acquis, as well as advocating ‘soft law’ as an alternative to traditional regulatory instruments such as directives. However, the lack of contextual industrial relations supports, in particular, the power imbalance in industrial relations due to the weakness of trade unions and social dialogue at workplace level, make uncertain prospects for ‘soft law’ as a strategy for working environment improvements in the new Member States.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2006.00619.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:44:y:2006:i:1:p:195-215

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().