In contrast to the traditional territoriality of social law (i.e. the restriction of the territorial scope of application to national territory), European social law is characterized by the free movement of people and services in the internal market. The realization of the social objectives of the Union is made more difficult by the fact that the normative work of the EU in this area has been greatly reduced compared to the first decades of the European Economic Community, partly because of the enlargement of the EU, partly because of various crises.
Therefore, with the "European Pillar of Social Rights" presented in 2017 to promote European labour and social law, the EU has developed a new approach that strengthens, if not replaces, the former regulatory perspective, which is difficult to establish in practice, by an empowering perspective. Against this background, the research project analyses the development of the EU's fundamental social rights with regard to three questions: What effectiveness do the EU's fundamental social rights enjoy? What is their relationship to basic national social rights? How is convergence possible, “while the improvement is being maintained”? First results were presented at the University of Paris 1.
