l bilanciamento tra le libertà economiche e i diritti sociali collettivi operato dalla Corte di Giustizia è un contemperamento tra diritti equiordinati?* = The balance between economic freedoms and collective social rights and actions; Court of Justice is a choice between rights equiordinati? Actions by the Court of Justice. WP C.S.D.L.E. “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 98/2012

In the Viking and Laval judgments and more recently in the Comm. v. Germany ruling, the Court of Justice applied the proportionality test to collective rights, setting a series of restrictions to the exercise of the right to strike and the right to collective bargaining. The way the ECJ balances the economic freedoms and the social rights is indeed very different from that of the Italian Constitutional Court. Unlike the European Union Treaties, the Italian Constitution recognizes an important role to the right to take collective action which has to be connected with article 3, paragraph 2, consequently the right of strike is more protected than the exercise of economic freedoms.

The Arab Spring: A Litmus Test for the EU’s Women’s Rights Policy in the Euro-Mediterranean Area? Bruges Regional Integration & Global Governance Paper 1/2013

The promotion of women’s rights is described as a priority within the external action of the European Union (EU). As a result of the Arab Spring uprisings which have been ongoing since 2011, democracy and human rights have been pushed to the forefront of European policy towards the Euro-Mediterranean region. The EU could capitalise on these transformations to help positively reshape gender relations or it could fail to adapt. Thus, the Arab Spring can be seen to serve as a litmus test for the EU’s women’s rights policy. This paper examines how and to what extent the EU diffuses women’s rights in this region, by using Ian Manners’ ‘Normative Power Europe’ as the conceptual framework. It argues that while the EU tries to behave as a normative force for women’s empowerment by way of ‘informational diffusion’, ‘transference’ ‘procedural diffusion’ and ‘overt diffusion’; its efforts could, and should, be strengthened. There are reservations over the EU’s credibility, choice of engagement and its commitment in the face of security and ideological concerns. Moreover, it seems that the EU focuses more intently on women’s political rights than on their social and economic freedoms.