Posting of workers and the revision of the European legal framework: Social dumping and unfair competition to an end?

Abstract

The posting of workers in the European Union (EU) has gained significant prominence in the last decade, due to the exponential growth of transnational provision of services following the financial crisis in 2008; the proliferation of letterbox companies in countries with comparatively low labour costs; the existence and increase in cases of fraud, discrimination and abuse; and, in particular, because in 2014 and 2018 there were legal reforms to combat legal uncertainty, social dumping and unfair competition at the European level. Although this sui generis form of international labour mobility is currently overshadowed by the situation caused by Covid-19, the legal debate as a result of the new provisions regulating the posting of workers will re-emerge because, whilst some of the inadequacies and weaknesses in Directive 96/71 have been amended, others have been left out and will undoubtedly be the subject of new disputes. This paper is dedicated to those, and to the analysis of cases 620/18 and 626/18 already settled by the CJEU, with the intention of contributing to a better interpretation of this phenomenon whose importance is indisputable, even more so in the current context of hypermobility in the internal market for services.