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Transnational work and the evolution of sovereignty

Final Report Summary - TWES (Transnational work and the evolution of sovereignty)

The TWES project generated systematic empirically based knowledge about the different ways in which the reconfiguration of the sovereignty norm has resulted in changes in migrant employment relations with the European Union. We have found that new forms of transnational employment take advantage of opportunities to systematically arbitrage between national employment norms, and perhaps more importantly to avoid national regulation altogether. European Union institutions, most notably the European Court of Justice, have enabled and encouraged this through promoting legal interpretations which protect transnational employers from regulation by national actors. The result is a growing substantially deregulated pan-European labour market in many industries, in which workers' default option in cases of employer abuse is to find work elsewhere.