'Hybrid' collective remedies in the EU social legal order

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate, on the basis of a socio-legal study presented in three qualitative case studies, the role of hybrid collective remedies in enforcing European socially oriented regulation, in particular environmental law, anti-discrimination law and consumer law, for the creation of a European social legal order, which is able to gradually counter its perceived internal market bias. The hybrid collective remedies at stake in the three case studies – each case study constituted by a preliminary reference to the CJEU – are symptomatic of the three legal-political fields at stake. With the EU taking a leading role in the three fields for the purpose of complementing the creation of an internal market, the EU has decoupled the fields from their national social welfare origin and re-established a policy which is not so much based on ensuring social justice, but more based on procedural mechanisms to ensure access justice. Likewise, the EU left the creation of collective remedies fostering a genuine protective purpose to the Member States. The national and European models of justice underlying the three legal-political fields and their remedies are of a complementary, i.e., of a hybrid nature, and are moving towards the creation of an integrated European social order. The creation of the European social order via national actors using the preliminary reference procedure to implement the three policies at stake goes hand in hand with the creation of a European society.