Cross-border road transport in EU law context

In this first part of the MOOC, we will introduce this MOOC and it's topic:

The second week sets forth the general legal framework depicting the basic operating mechanisms of the European Union internal market with a focus oriented at the personal and material scope of three fundamental freedoms of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU): free movement of workers, freedom to provide services and freedom of establishment. The core principle governing the fundamental freedoms embodied in the Treaties is the principle of non-discrimination and the prohibition of imposing obstacles to these freedoms. These principles, depending on the freedom, may have a different ambit, as shown by important case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which will be analysed further throughout the memorandum.

The third week dwells into the problem of applicability of rules on private international law on the employment contracts in the cross-border road transport. It is demonstrated that due to the intrinsic characteristic of the cross-border road transport, which is its transnational nature, conflict of laws may arise. The questions that need to be addressed upon such consideration are not only revolving around the law of which Member State is applicable to the employment contracts at hand, but also, the jurisdiction of the courts over the claim that is to be submitted. To bring coherency to the subject matter, which usually was regulated at the national level by the Member States, some legal regimes have been adopted by the EU that form a large part of EU law, which are further set forth in this part.

The fourth week concerns the posting of workers, who under EU law are not considered to be workers falling under the ambit of the free movement of workers provisions of the TFEU (Article 45 TFEU), but instead, they fall under the scope of the provisions governing the freedom to provide services. Consequently, posted workers cannot enjoy fully the principle of equal treatment unlike workers do, because as argued, they do not enter the labour market of a host Member State since they are supposed to provide their services temporary. Nevertheless, in order to strengthen the protection of these workers and to eliminate the risks of unfair competition between undertakings established in the Member States, the Posting of Workers Directive plays a pivotal role by guaranteeing a minimum set of hard-core rights to those workers who are posted to another Member State. In addition, the Posting of Workers Enforcement Directive seeks to safeguard a proper enforcement of these rules. Since the issue of posting is present in cross-border transport, as it happens to be the case that truck drivers are the ones being posted to deliver the goods from one Member State to another Member State, these legal instruments must be taken into account with regard to the issues concerning genuine posting and the enforcement of the existing rules on posting.