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Disability assessments play a key role in welfare states but are increasingly contested, not least for their compatibility with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This paper draws on evidence of global governance and assessment practices in 34 European countries, the largest international study to date. The paper reflects on the model of disability in the CRPD and its implications for disability assessment, drawing on the work of the CRPD Committee. The paper also examines examples of promising practice in assessment in European countries and concludes by identifying elements of a CRPD-compatible approach. Disability assessments must be underpinned by both a social-contextual concept of disability and a human rights approach. Administrative attribution of disability status based on categorical diagnosis or individual functioning alone is incompatible with this approach. This approach challenges the historic individualization of disability assessments and the knowledge relationships underpinning them.

Students' evaluations are used to measure teaching effectiveness of staff. As such they are used to assess and appraise staff. The article - taking a doctrinal rather than an educational science approach - shows that there are considerable problems with the hypothesis that students' evaluations measure teaching effectiveness. This is even more so in systems where an overarching teaching philosophy like problem-based learning (PBL) is applied. The article identifies a working hypothesis that students do not use the teaching philosophy as primary motivator to evaluate staff, leading to a perverted incentive. Changes made to the system of evaluation in the law faculty of Maastricht University are described.

This contribution provides an analytical overview of recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the framework agreement on fixed-term work (FTW agreement). The cases discussed virtually all concerned fixed-term work in the public sector and, in essence, raise the delicate question of whether the non-discrimination rule and the rules on fighting abuse of successive fixed-term employment relationships, demand from Member States to sacrifice classic notions of public service employment. The case law reveals that the Court leaves the Member States considerable discretion in hiring fixed-term workers instead of permanent workers or civil servants.

Developed and developing countries are increasingly cooperating on migration management, and human rights NGOs have harshly criticised these instruments for cooperation. This article asks how and to what extent parliaments are challenging policies for international cooperation on migration management. On the one hand parliaments have traditionally been described as ?moral tribunes? in international relations, due to their principled support for human rights. On the other hand, parliaments are increasingly operating in political systems marked by anti-immigrant sentiment and increased support for right-wing populist parties. How do parliaments navigate between these two poles when it comes to international cooperation on migration management? Based on examples from Australia, the EU and Israel, this article shows that the use of non-legally binding instruments for cooperation limits the formal role of parliaments, but also and more importantly that there is a lack of political will to scrutinise these instruments and hold executives to account (notwithstanding attempts by some members of parliament or some political groupings to challenge policies through informal means). The lack of political contestation implies that, as far as migration management is concerned, ?politics stop at the water's edge?.

In the reporting period (February 2019-June 2019), the Court of Justice of the European Union did not deliver any ground breaking rulings that really altered existing coordination rules on social security. Nonetheless, the Court did rule in various interesting cases. These include the material scope of Regulation 883/2004 ( Dreyer), the rules determining the applicable legislation ( SF), invalidity benefits ( Vester), and family benefits ( Bogatu). In addition, the Court brought about clarification of the possibility of retaining worker status (and thus claiming social benefits as a worker) under Directive 2004/38 ( Tarola) and the right of Turkish nationals to export benefits under Decision 3/80 when returning to Turkey ( Coban).

In its efforts to counteract terrorist threats and contain the risks posed by returning foreign fighters, the Netherlands, like several other European states, has enacted legislation introducing denationalisation as a counter-terrorism measure. The Dutch measures target convicted terrorists and foreign fighters alike, the latter without the prior involvement of the judiciary. This practice not only challenges traditional conceptions of citizenship, but also raises several human rights concerns, of which discrimination is the most pressing. This Article therefore examines the measures taken by the Netherlands and analyses their compatibility with Articles 14 and P12-1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to assess the measures' disproportionate focus on Dutch-Moroccans from a legal perspective. Based on this conclusion of inequality, the Article then ventures beyond purely legal analysis to discuss the Dutch legislation more broadly, before linking the legal argument with normative critiques on the denationalisation of terrorists, and foreign fighters in particular. Taken together, the legal and normative findings establish that denationalisation as a counter-terrorism measure in the Netherlands cannot be reconciled with the legal or normative dimension of the equality principle.

This concluding article draws out the main themes of the special issue, and points to avenues of future research into eu external migration policy: the role of civil society actors; democratic accountability and the rule of law; policy implementation and evaluation (including unintended consequences); and the reasons for continued externalization.

This book seeks to explore, from a multidisciplinary perspective, whether human rights are, in fact, a myth or a lived reality. Over the years much has been said about their effectiveness or, rather, their ineffectiveness. This perceived ineffectiveness relates not only to institutional challenges at the international level, but also to national implementation mechanisms and processes. In addition, questions have arisen as to whether individuals or groups of individuals actually benefit from the normative guarantees contained in human rights law and whether human rights as legal constructs can be effectively translated into better outcomes. This volume can be distinguished from the existing literature by virtue of the fact that it not only brings together scholars at different stages of their careers, but also that it incorporates contributions that adopt different methodological perspectives and cover a variety of topics.The book should prove of great benefit to human rights researchers, human rights practitioners, NGOs and students.

The lack of access to effective diagnosis and treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) remains a persistent ethical, human rights and public health challenge globally. In addressing this challenge, arguments based on a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to health have most often been focused on the Right to Health. However, a key challenge in multidrug-resistant (MDR-) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR-) TB is the glaring absence of scientific research; ranging from basic science and drug discovery through to implementation science once new tools have been developed. Although the Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications (REBSP) is a little theorised human right, it has the potential to enrich our understanding and use of the Rights-Based Approach to health. In this chapter, we argue that States’ duties to respect, protect and fulfil the REBSP within and outside their borders is an important vehicle that can be drawn on to redress the lack of research into new drug development and appropriate use of existing drugs for DR-TB in high burden settings. We call for urgent attention to minimum core obligations for the REBSP and the need for a General Comment by a UN human rights monitoring body to provide for its interpretation. We also note that conceptualization of the REBSP has the potential to complement Right to Health claims intended to enhance access to treatment for DR-TB on a global scale.

Unintended consequences arising from EU external migration policy are a result of the multi-actor nature of this policy and of policy interactions. In addition, scholars face serious methodological challenges in establishing what the EU’s ‘intent’ is in external migration policy and, therefore, in determining which consequences are intended and which are unintended. The literature on the implementation and evaluation of EU external migration policy is in its infancy, and future work should take into account all policy outcomes – both those that were intended and those that were not.

Cross-border employees and self-employed workers are confronted with the regulations of at least two states when it comes to taxation and social security. Without delving into the specifics of national regulations, this article examines the applicable rules concerning the levy of taxes and social security contributions in the context of cross-border employment. Regulations aimed at avoiding double taxation are different from those aimed at avoiding the double payment of social security contributions. Because social security in the Member States can be financed in different ways, the levying of so-called economic double taxation is possible. This is true in particular where states use a large part of the tax revenues to finance their social security system. Cross-border workers that are required to pay taxes in these states and also pay social security contributions in another state can feel that they are paying double social security contributions. This contributes to a sense of injustice and is undesirable. The conclusion is that possible double economic contributions must be studied in a broader European context. First, the problem must be identified and then solutions formulated in order to prevent double levying.

Solidarity is the “moral infrastructure” of social insurance arrangements that protect citizens against financial risks of illness: costs of medical care (health insurance) and loss of income (disability insurance). Although these arrangements have both met reforms, the effects of these reforms on the two forms of insurance have not yet been compared. This article presents a comparative analysis of these reforms’ impact on solidarity since the 1980s in the Netherlands. It develops an analytical framework, distinguishing coverage and financing dimensions, and concludes that the reforms affected several solidarity dimensions and that the effects were partly different in health insurance and disability insurance.

This chapter examines European Union (EU) disability law and policy, and considers the scope for the EU to address access to culture for persons with disabilities and the scope for addressing access to art works through three-dimensional (3D) printing. It reflects existing secondary legislation and policy addressing culture and copyright and reflects on the relevance of those measures for 3D printing. The Employment Equality Directive establishes a duty to make a reasonable accommodation for individuals with a disability with regard to employment and vocational training. The Creative Europe Regulation aims to promote European cultural and linguistic diversity and strengthen the competitiveness of European cultural and creative sectors. The chapter concludes that while no explicit reference to using 3D printing to improve access to art for people with visual or other impairments is found in any current EU instrument, promoting such access would be in line with the current EU policy.

Over the past decades, numerous reports have emerged suggesting that children from poor countries are being obtained illegally and transported transnationally in order to meet the high western demand for adoptable healthy babies. This chapter identifies the structural components of the transnational illegal adoption market by applying the basic logic of the routine activity theory that has been developed by cohen and felson. It explains that in the context of extreme inequality (“criminogenic asymmetries”) between the sending and the receiving countries, supply, demand, as well as weak public and private sector social control mechanisms have contributed to the nature and size of the illegal adoption market. The chapter outlines the main difference between conventional forms of human trafficking and child trafficking for adoption purposes and explains why the latter phenomenon is particularly difficult to detect.

Published online: 13 May 2019 While the global increase of expatriate dual citizenship acceptance over the past decades has been widely observed, the temporal and spatial contexts of this trend have remained understudied. Based on a novel data set of expatriate dual citizenship policies worldwide since 1960, we find that dual citizenship toleration has increased in the last half century from one-third to three-quarter of states globally. We argue that these domestic policy changes should be understood in light of normative pressure in a world where restrictions on individual choice in citizenship status are increasingly contested and where liberalisation is reinforced through interdependence and diaspora politics. We apply Cox proportional hazard models to examine dual citizenship liberalisation and find that states are more likely to move to a tolerant policy if neighbouring states have done so and that they tend to do so in conjunction with extending voting rights to citizens residing abroad and receiving remittances from abroad. Contrary to other studies, we do not observe significant variation by regime type. The contribution to this publication by Maarten Vink is financed by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 682626).

This article discusses the offence of participation in a terrorist group or conspiracy under French law, as applied by the French criminal justice system to prosecute and convict individuals who travel or attempt to travel abroad to participate in armed jihad. In light of a critical assessment of decisions rendered by French courts in cases involving jihadi fighters, it proposes to reflect on the orientation of the criminal law in matters relating to the participation of European nationals in armed jihad in foreign territory. Expressing concern over the excessive reach of substantive criminal-law provisions and of related prosecutorial policies, the article argues that the current legal framework and newly proposed legislation no longer serve the legitimate objective of protecting public order and safety from a tangible threat, and that the criminal law is at risk of becoming a tool of ideological warfare against designated enemies of the state.

The concept of circular migration keeps appearing in the context of the eu labour migration policy through legal instruments such as the seasonal workers directive and the proposal for a recast of the blue card directive, as well as it has been featured in the latest mobility partnership with belarus from october 2016. These examples suggest that the eu still has some interest in promoting circular migration as a policy instrument. The question is what does this interest mean in terms of the rights of migrant workers? most of the literature so far focuses on conceptualising circular migration or analysing circular migration patterns rather than looking into implementation dynamics as part of the eu migration policy and its external dimension. This chapter aims at filling namely this gap by assessing the circularity of eu labour migration policies with regards to the eastern partnership neighbourhood and addressing the question of whether they provide rights-based outcomes for migrant workers. This is done through the prism of a framework of benchmarks based on international universal and regional human rights standards as well as policy measures that foster circularity focusing on entry and re-entry conditions, work authorisation, residence, social security coordination and entry and residence conditions for family members. This chapter is based on legal empirical research and combines legal and policy analysis with qualitative methods.

This chapter offers an analysis of the eu mobility partnerships as one case in point for policy intersectionality, within the framework of the multi-level governance literature. It argues that the governance of mobility partnerships is characterized by its multi-actor nature, and focuses on the consequences of different actors’ preferences and interactions for policy-making and implementation. In particular, it emphasises the roles of the non-eu countries and member states in making and shaping eu external migration policy. Finally, the chapter analyses implementation, something which has been understudied in the literature to date. It argues that the multi-actor nature of eu external migration policy presents obstacles to implementation due to the different policy visions of the different actors, and the non-hierarchical structure which links them.

The issue of eu policy coherence has attracted tremendous attention from academics and policy makers. Alongside much conceptual querying of what policy coherence means, there is a continuous lamenting of the lack of policy coherence, and the need for more is stressed. Political scientists analyse the decision-making procedures and conclude that different eu institutions, bodies and agencies do not coordinate, resulting in policy coherence. Legal scientists bemoan the incoherent eu legal order and argue for further treaty reform. This chapter takes the case of the eu (external) migration policy to show that this widespread incoherence is a normal and inevitable feature of eu governance in this field, and of any pluralistic, democratic and rule of law based system of government. Divergent interests, values, and actors can only be accommodated in policies by allowing for some degree of policy incoherence, it is thus the condition upon which eu policy making is premised. The chapter argues that the dominant preoccupation with policy coherence should be reappraised, and advances a broad notion of coherence embedded in the rule of law.

This contribution maps recent global trends regarding the grounds for acquisition of citizenship by descent and by birth on a particular territory. Questions of nationality law have traditionally been part of the State’s reserved domain. However, it will be seen that some of the trends regarding citizenship acquisition by ius sanguinis and ius soli can be attributed to the inroads made by international law into the rule that each State has absolute autonomy in deciding who its citizens are. Others are the result of the still considerable leeway available to States in nationality matters. Against the backdrop of the current international standards and drawing on data collected by the GLOBALCIT Observatory for 174 countries on five continents, the article analyses national practices in respect of the acquisition by ius sanguinis and ius soli, remedial ius soli for otherwise stateless children, and the nationality effects of the recognition of paternity.

In the fi rst part of 2015 the Court of Justice (CoJ) of the European Union (EU) delivered a comparatively large number of rulings relevant for the fi eld of social security. None of the twelve rulings selected for purposes of this overview can be labelled as landmark judgments introducing new principles or overruling existing ones. Yet, virtually all of the judgments do bring important clarifi cations by specifying previously recognised principles or interpretations or by applying these in cases involving other factual circumstances. Th e most interesting judgments concern the rules determining the applicable legislation ( Franzen, Kik and Evans), the application of Regulations 1408/71 and 883/2004 to ‘socially earmarked taxes’ ( de Ruyter), the continued legal signifi cance of bilateral social security agreements concluded before the aforementioned Regulations became applicable to the States concerned ( Balasz), the right to unemployment benefi ts for frontier workers ( Mertens), the right of Turkish nationals to export of special non-contributory cash benefi ts (SNCBs – Demirci) and the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of gender in social security matters (Cachaldora Fernandez).

Tax administrations in the European Union exchange an ever-increasing amount of information on taxation matters on a mandatory and automatic basis. This development gives rise to data protection concerns. The aim of this article is to examine how these data protection concerns have been recognized by the Union legislator in the recent and fast process towards a comprehensive automatic exchange of tax data of private taxpayers in the European Union. It will be shown that the combination of data protection rights and exchange of tax information legislation proves to be an uneasy one as the Union legislator appears reluctant to provide for data protection safeguards in Union legislation on tax information exchange.

The central focus of the study is what obstacles might exist in national legislation and practice of the Western Balkan states that might hinder or complicate the efficiency of international cooperation, according to European standards. The states that are included in the study are all states that have expressed their wish to accede to the European Union (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia) and Croatia that already has become a Member State. The question “What could amount to impediments to international cooperation?” has been leading throughout the study. The study is therefore to be considered as problem-focused. The study analyses various forms of international cooperation, such as exchange of information, mutual legal assistance, extradition, transfer of proceedings, joint investigation teams, confiscation, as well as the transfer of judgements and prisoners.

In 2014 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) did not deliver landmark rulings establishing new principles relevant for, or overturning previous jurisprudence on, social security. Rather, the cases that were decided by the ECtHR confirmed key principles developed in older case law and clarified their practical meaning and implications by applying these in new or comparable cases. Notably, most of the cases decided by the Court in 2014 concerned pension reforms and the concrete implications of these for individuals.1

This article explores and reviews the approach of the Court of Justice of the EU to defining disability under the Employment Equality Directive and concentrates, in particular, on the two most recent cases which were decided in 2014: Z and Kaltoft and the relevance of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), to which the EU is a party. The article argues that the Court's approach to defining disability, as applied in practice, is not compatible with either the wording or spirit of the CRPD, and there is a real danger that the CJEU's mistaken approach will also trickle down to national courts. This is in spite of the fact that the Court pays lip service to the social contextual model of disability as outlined in the CRPD in its judgments.

ispartof: Review of European Administrative Law vol:8 issue:1 pages:151-173 status: published

For all those following the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in social security matters, the last three months of 2014 were particularly interesting.1 The CJEU delivered its long-awaited judgment in the ‘social tourism case’ of Dano, expressed itself (once again) on the powers of the European Union (EU) to adopt social security measures vis-à-vis third countries (Turkey in United Kingdom v Council) and provided important clarification about the rights of third-country nationals who de facto cannot be treated for the illnesses they suffer from in their countries of origin (M'Bodj and Abdida). In addition, the CJEU delivered noteworthy rulings on planned hospital treatment in other Member States (Petru), old-age pensions (Larcher; Somova) and family benefits (Fassbender-Firman; Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund).

It is well known that the dominant paradigm underlying the free movement jurisprudence of the Court of Justice has progressively shifted from the 'market citizen' to the EU citizen: in order to invoke free movement and equal treatment rights an economic nexus is no longer needed, allowing, for example, students to claim equal treatment with host Member State nationals as regards access to education and the receipt of study grants. Normatively, however, this raises important questions. The classic logic whereby these free movement and equal treatment rights were provided to Member State nationals as a quid pro quo for their contribution to and participation in a project of European integration-the establishment of the common market-is undermined. A new 'aim' or 'rationale' is thus needed, capable of explaining and informing the citizenship jurisprudence of the Court. The purpose of this article is to construct a conceptual framework for the Court's EU citizenship jurisprudence by relying on a cosmopolitan vision of citizenship as set out by Immanuel Kant in his seminal work Zum ewigen Frieden. It is submitted in this article that Kant's cosmopolitan right of hospitality, meant to guarantee interaction between the peoples of the world with a view to developing a shared universal conscience characterised by a desire for peace and prosperity, in essence informs the EU citizenship jurisprudence of the Court.

Introducing a ‘sporting nationality’ that is completely independent of the standard legal nationality linking individuals to a state is neither feasible nor desirable, as the term nationality and its connotations are broader than the mere sporting context. Since the literature on sport law (lex sportiva) is not clear about the differences and similarities between sporting nationality and standard legal nationality, the concept of sporting nationality remains vague. This article argues that nationality should remain the underlying tie between athletes and their country of representation. Instead of introducing a sporting nationality, the recommendation is to establish a uniform set of rules that provides athletes with a ‘sporting license’ of the country of which they are nationals. This avoids confusion as to whether a sporting nationality entails some of the rights and duties traditionally linked to the concept of nationality.

This article explores the various exceptions to the non-discrimination principle and the justifications for different treatment that apply in the disability context. For the purposes of this article, exceptions are situations that are excluded from the scope of non-discrimination law and where different treatment is allowed, whilst justifications are situations in which non-discrimination law applies, and where de facto different treatment is either required or allowed, and the limits to such requirements. The article begins by briefly discussing the peculiarities of disability non-discrimination law, addressing the requirement to make a reasonable accommodation, the asymmetrical nature of disability non-discrimination law, and positive action obligations. The article then introduces the key non-discrimination requirements found in United Nations and European Union disability equality law, before proceeding to examine a number of exceptions to the non-discrimination principle and justifications for different treatment. The article concludes that exceptions and justifications can be a tool to fine-tune or target non-discrimination law, with the potential to both limit and extend protection, in the context of disability.

This contribution examines the role of the duration of lawful residence and the assessment of the facts of the individual case for the determination of the rights of (European) Union citizens and their family members by the Court of Justice of the European Union. While the Court initially embraced an approach which aimed at furthering and strengthening the rights of Union citizens, a conceptual shift has become visible over the last couple of years which seems to aim at limiting Union citizen’s rights. This article seeks to shed light on the underlying rationale of the Court’s judgments regarding Union citizens and their third-country family members by focusing on the application of the criterion of an individual assessment and the criterion of the duration of lawful residence respectively. To that end, it examines the Court’s case law in four selected areas of European Union law: the protection against expulsion, the right of permanent residence, access to non-contributory cash benefits, and the right of residence of third-country family members of Union citizens upon return to the latter’s Member State of nationality after having exercised free movement rights. It is submitted that the Court’s application and interpretation of these criteria in the areas under scrutiny seems to be driven primarily by the aim to limit citizens’ rights and not by the attainment of legal certainty which has been brought forward by the Court.

This chapter does not deal with substantive norms of eu equality law, but with the way in which eu law has built a procedural and institutional framework that member states should put in place in order to facilitate the effective application of the substantive anti-discrimination rules. This dimension was almost absent from the first phase of eu anti-discrimination law, which focused on the grounds of sex and nationality, and its main features were established by two directives adopted in 2000 and later developed in other instruments as well. The emphasis is, on the one hand, on a series of requirements which aim at facilitating the effective access to justice of victims of discrimination and, on the other hand, on the creation of non-judicial equality bodies designed to promote a culture of equality. This framework was most recently, in 2014, extended with some modifications to non-discrimination on grounds of nationality and the free movement of workers within the european union.keywordsaccess to justiceburden of proofequality bodieseu anti-discrimination directivesnationality discrimination.

One of the most controversial questions that arose during negotiations on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons (CRPD) concerned whether or not health interventions could ever be performed without the recipient’s consent. This is particularly important in relation to persons with severe mental impairments whose consent to or refusal of treatment may be rendered irrelevant under mental health or guardianship legislation. In its General Comment No 1, the United Nations CRPD Committee has stated that States Parties have an obligation to require mental health practitioners to obtain the free and informed consent of persons with disabilities prior to any treatment. This article analyses recent case law in Australia that indicates that while there has been some attention paid to human rights breaches in relation to the detention of persons with mental impairments for treatment purposes, there is a large gap between what the CRPD Committee requires and the ‘weak’ protection that continues to be afforded in relation to informed consent to medical treatment.

The adoption of a developed disability policy, including the adoption of disability non-discrimination legislation, is a relatively recent concern for the European Union. For most of the history of the EU, the founding Treaties contained no explicit reference to disability, and therefore no disability-specific competence existed. Nevertheless, occasional references to disability, and disabled people, were found in a handful of legal instruments and soft law initiatives, although these did not amount to an attempt to develop a broad disability policy or programme until relatively recently. From a competence-related perspective, the major breakthrough occurred with the Amsterdam Treaty, which came into force in 1999, and which included the first explicit mention of disability. The inclusion of Article 13 (now Article 19 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)) in the European Communities Treaty in 1999 sparked a flurry of academic speculation on its potential value and implications for EC non-discrimination law on grounds including disability. The rapid adoption of two directives, the Racial Equality Directive and the Employment Equality Directive, based on Article 13 EC, generated a further round of academic discussion. Since then the legal situation has evolved significantly: Member States have transposed the directives and a body of related case law has emerged in both the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and within some Member States. Meanwhile the Council has declined to adopt a Commission proposal for a new non-discrimination directive to fill some of the perceived gaps left by the initial two directives.

This article examines the relevant international law relating to informed consent to treatment for individuals with psychosocial disabilities and reflects on the protection offered in this respect by the European Convention on Human Rights (echr) and the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. The article argues that while the un Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is beginning to influence case law of the European Court of Human Rights, only ‘weak’ protection has been afforded to people with psychosocial disabilities by the echr and the Court in relation to informed consent for medical treatment.

The thesis addresses the recent tension around student mobility and tries to answer the overarching question on how to safeguard mobility rights for study purposes of Union citizens within the EU, while simultaneously ensuring the sustainability of the national higher education systems of (certain) Member States. The main conclusion in this regard is that the current EU legal framework applying to mobile students is both insufficient and incoherent. In addition, the Member States of the EU seem to have trouble properly implementing EU law in this area and cannot by themselves effectively and fairly engage in balancing exercise. Rather there is a need for a comprehensive and generous EU-level study loan system – managed centrally at the EU level - to support the mobility rights of Union citizens for study purposes.

Ageing has been a concern for several years now. Member States introduced higher pensionable ages to increase labour market participation and facilitate the active participation of older workers in the labour market, and also those who are beyond pensionable age. This contribution uses the Netherlands as a case study for analysing the introduced changes made to facilitate the employment of pensionable workers. Besides increasing pensionable age, obstacles in labour law were also removed. A ‘labour law light’ regime has been created for this group of workers, making hiring pensionable workers more flexible by loosening dismissal law protection, introducing an extended possibility of using fixed-term employment contracts, and diminishing the employer's obligation to continue paying the worker's wage during sickness. This paper critically analyses the merits of the government's response by statutorily facilitating the possibility of employing workers beyond their pensionable age. The regime's aim has significant limitations with regard to actually stimulating employees to continue working beyond the pensionable age, having in mind a more sustainable approach towards active ageing.

Using Sen's capability approach as an analytical framework, this paper attempts to assess and evaluate the Dutch measures for facilitating transitions from unemployment to (gainful) employment. This method is particularly useful in the context of the EU's economically informed flexicurity approach to evaluate the institutional preconditions for effective participation in the labour market. It will be argued that the existing legal measures alone are insufficient to address the difficulties of reintegrating older (long-term) unemployed persons in the labour market. Measures taken to reactivate older unemployed workers merely build upon economic considerations, such as guaranteeing the sustainability of the pensions and social security schemes. Other (non-economic) considerations are often overlooked. This ignores the actual risks: not actually having access to the labour market entails a variety of risks, not only in terms of job, and thus (a partial) income, loss for the employee concerned, but also for the Member States who are obliged to do everything necessary to achieve the EU's goals.

Cooperation with non-EU countries is a central migration policy priority for the EU, and since 2008 eight Mobility Partnerships have been signed. Given the importance attached to this policy area, it is essential that policy-makers understand how EU external migration policy works in practice. However, the literature on the implementation of EU external migration policy is very limited. This article addresses this deficit, by conducting a conceptual assessment of implementation dynamics in the Mobility Partnerships. At this stage in the implementation process, it is not yet possible to assess whether the Mobility Partnerships have contributed to mobility, which is their stated aim. Instead, the literature on implementation is applied in a “backward” fashion, starting with the implementation dynamics at play. The article concludes that standard analytical frameworks for assessing implementation processes will need to be adapted for “new” policy tools featuring elements of flexibility or voluntary participation, in order to accurately capture implementation processes. Future research should adopt a critical, human rights-centred approach to the issue of implementation of EU external migration policy.

This article explores the outer and inner boundaries of the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of age as established by European Union (EU) law and implemented in a selected number of member states. The case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the matter is marked by a broad interpretation of the material scope of the prohibition of age discrimination. A large range of situations thereby fall within the scope of EU law; yet the European Court has overall adopted a rather flexible approach to acknowledging the legitimacy of justifications as well as the adequacy and necessity of measures having a discriminatory effect. Some of the key substantive challenges faced by courts relate to the delicate link between age and capabilities as well as to the interaction between the prohibition of age discrimination and retirement ages. It will be argued that the complexity of the CJEU’s case law on the matter is regrettable.