This chapter provides a case study in regulatory multi-level governance within the European Union, with a substantive focus on the regime in place for the authorisation of cultivation of genetically modified crops. Whilst presenting a detailed account of the supranational level regime, it seeks explicitly to write in the subnational, regional dimension to our accounts of policy evolution in this highly controversial area. The chapter considers regions’ ‘upstream’ engagement in the policy processes at EU level, through judicial challenge to EU measures as well as attempts to influence supranational level legislative reform, which is currently ongoing. In this regard, it looks both at the role of regions within this process, and within the terms of the resultant legislation. In addition, the chapter considers regions’ ‘downstream’ engagement, in their implementation and application of the existing rules. As a number of regions have sought to declare themselves GM-free zones, this chapter explores the legality of such local and regional GM crop cultivation bans, as a matter of EU law. In short, the chapter contributes further to our understandings of the place held by regions within the EU system of governance demonstrating how regions may themselves be both legal and political actors of significance within the EU order, whose interests are not always congruent with that of their Member State.
In 1977, the Council of the European Community unanimously adopted Directive 77/187/EEC on the approximation of laws of the member states relating to the safeguarding of employees’ rights in the event of transfers of undertakings, businesses, or parts of businesses. The first half of the 1970s had witnessed an ever increasing incidence of business restructuring throughout the territory of the Community. Concern over the possible impact of such structural changes on affected employees prompted the introduction of the Acquired Rights Directive, which, according to its preamble, had the primary purpose of providing ‘for the protection of employees in the event of a change of employer, in particular to ensure that their rights are safeguarded’. In the event that a transfer of an undertaking results in a change of employer, the directive provides for the automatic transfer of the employment relationship from the old employer (the transferor) to the new employer (the transferee).
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