A new phase in the trajectory of social Europe?

Abstract

Silvana Sciarra was a professor at the European University Institute (EUI) be-tween 1994 and 2003, in the middle of her rich scholarly career. In her publications during that period, she embraced a wide variety of subjects, including: the domes-tic enforcement of European labour law; the tension between market freedoms and social regulation in the EU; the Europeanization of collective agreements; the emergence of the open method of coordination in the field of employment after the Treaty of Amsterdam, as part of the Lisbon Agenda; the new attempts to advance the protection of fundamental social rights leading to their inclusion in the EU Charter of Rights of 2000; the constitutionalisation of social Europe in the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty for Europe; and various subjects of comparative employ-ment law such as the regulation of atypical employment contracts. Those years were also marked by the passage at the EUI of a number of doctoral students, coming from many European countries, who wrote their dissertation on topics of comparative and European labour law under the supervision of Silvana Sciarra. Many of them went on towards successful careers in academia and in the professional world of labour relations. A number of them have contributed to this special issue, in which they honour the work of their supervisor whilst reflecting on the state of labour and social law in Europe today.