This book examines the specific reforms in social protection that took place during the European financial crisis, while embedding them in a broader human rights and constitutional law framework of nine European countries. Analytical and comprehensive, this is a helpful tool for all legal professionals that deal with crisis-related reforms.

This book examines European welfare states, how and why they are changing, and how they are likely to develop.

Hit by the European financial and economic crisis in 2008, several Member States of the European Monetary Union (EMU) were unable to refinance their public debt through the financial markets. As a result, they asked for financial assistance from international institutions and European financial assistance mechanisms. That assistance often came at a high price for citizens, cuts in pensions and social assistance, and controversial reforms in public healthcare. These far-reaching reforms were, in many cases, experienced as violations of people's human rights. National constitutional courts, the Court of Justice of the EU, and the European Court of Human Rights issued a series of rulings on the conformity of the reforms in social protection initiated during the Eurozone crisis. This book offers a holistic analysis of the specific reforms in social protection introduced during the European financial crisis and their implications for constitutional law. Focusing on the social reforms of nine European countries that were greatly affected by the financial crisis, the volume seeks to address the legacy of the financial crisis on the application of constitutional law and the welfare state. The book will act as a helpful tool to legal academics interested in the challenges of constitutional and social law initiated by financial assistance conditionality, to advocates in quest of sound legal bases for the protection of individuals affected by social security reforms, and to national and international judges who are confronted with cases that question the legality and legitimacy of the crisis-related reforms.

Many constitutions include provisions intended to limit the discretion of governments in economic policy. In times of financial crises, such provisions often come under pressure as a result of calls for exceptional responses to crisis situations. This volume assesses the ability of constitutional orders all over the world to cope with financial crises, and the demands for emergency powers that typically accompany them. Bringing together a variety of perspectives from legal scholars, economists, and political scientists, this volume traces the long-run implications of financial crises for constitutional order. In exploring the theoretical and practical problems raised by the constitutionalization of economic policy during times of severe crisis, this volume showcases an array of constitutional design options and the ways they channel governmental responses to emergency.

Demonstrating the ways in which the micro and macro-economic constitutions of Europe have reacted to legal measures enacted to counter the economic crisis of the past decade, this innovative book takes an interdisciplinary approach in its attempt to understand and portray the metamorphosis of the European Economic Constitution. It contains contributions from leading scholars and experts in European economic law, discussing the challenges, solutions found, problems arising and possible approaches to embed the economic constitution in the broader constitutional framework of the EU. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial}

This book assesses the balancing act between EU free movement law, fundamental EU objectives and Member States' concerns regarding their welfare systems. It takes a novel dual approach: namely combining doctrinal analysis of EU citizenship case law with an examination of mobility data. This allows the study to clearly show an imbalance between the representation and protection of these conflicting interests in EU case law. It goes further, identifying avenues for reform and highlighting the importance of the principle of proportionality for attaining a legitimate balance of interests. In a field in which much has been written, this offers a truly original perspective. It will be much welcomed by scholars of EU free movement and citizenship law.

This book is the first to address the multi-faceted influence of the global financial crisis on the national constitutions of the countries most affected. By tracing the impact of the crisis on formal and informal constitutional change, sovereignty issues, fundamental rights protection, regulatory reforms, jurisprudence, the augmentation of executive power, and changes in the party system it addresses all areas of the current constitutional law dialogue and aims to become a reference book with regard to the interaction between financial crises and constitutions. The book includes contributions from prominent experts on Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the USA providing a critical analysis of the effects of the financial crisis on the constitution. The volume’s extensive comparative chapter pins down distinct constitutional reactions towards the financial crisis, building an explanatory theory that accounts for the different ways constitutions responded to the crisis. How and why constitutions formed their reactions in the face of the financial crisis unravels throughout the book.