M. Westerveld

The individual job seeker in the sphere of contractualism

Purpose – Activation policies in most Western countries have discovered the private tool of contract and in a short period of time the contract has penetrated the whole domain. Among the forerunner countries contracts in different forms, collective as well as individual, have become the central steering instrument. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on what this change can and does entail for the individual job seeker on benefit. Job seekers are no longer expected to passive undergo treatment but expected to contribute actively to ones own return into the labour market. The main rationale behind this shift is the idea that working with contracts increases the level of involvement and, therefore improves results over time: results in terms of better motivated clients, more focused policymakers, providers and frontline workers delivering client‐orientated services.Design/methodology/approach – Using qualitative research the article maps the different types of contracts using empirical materi...

Women and social security

Does ‘the’ social security take sufficient account of women? Are its protection schemes sufficiently aimed at safeguarding women’s interests? These are the questions I was invited to answer for this handbook on social security law. At the same time I was asked to adopt an unorthodox approach, one that is more reflexive than strictly legal. This request is not without complications. To begin with, there is the normativity of the questions at hand. The question whether and, if so, when protection schemes take sufficient interest in the position of a certain target group is subjective, and people who write about this usually begin or end their discourse with a personal standpoint. One can wonder whether this is appropriate in a book that is supposed to be a handbook. The second complication has to do with the combination of the target group (women) and the concept of social security. The legal concept of social security was conceived at a time when the context of labour and social risks was very different from what it is today. This was the case at the time the concept was first ‘invented’, and it was no different shortly after WW II when social security was implemented as a fundamental right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In order to do justice to the request, I must look for a definition of social security that is broader than the one that is generally used. The third complication is related to the legal scope. The question must be answered in a book on EU law, which means that the social security schemes in all EU member states might be relevant. That element makes this task extremely complicated if not impossible to fulfil. After all, the EU is now made up of 28 member states, each with its own social security scheme. And a description of 28 schemes would be not only tedious, but also far beyond the scope of one chapter. Of course, one could try to tackle this complication by approaching the member states not as separate entities but as members of a welfare state family. This approach is not without its risks, however. For one thing, the original typology method (i.e. that developed by Esping-Andersen) has met with strong criticism, especially from a gender perspective (I deal with this issue later on). A second possible approach is from the perspective of EU non-discrimination law. A strong position of women in the labour market and, within this context, the equal treatment of men and women have always been goals of EU social policy, practically since the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. As a result, we now have a vast body of EU law, which is generally referred to as equal treatment law (hereinafter ETL). The period of hard law instruments (roughly 1960-90) was succeeded by a period in which EU social policy was dominated by soft law. In both periods, the topic of women and social security (hereinafter ‘women and…’) remained an important focus of EU policymakers. In this chapter, I deal with the two periods successively. This chapter is organized as follows. I first present a theoretical framework in the form of a few notions that are central to this theme (section 2). In section 3, I describe the development of EU ETL and its impact on social security. In section 4, I approach the theme from a broader perspective. In this section, the central notions are gender mainstreaming, and work and family reconciliation policies. In the final section (5), I return to the central question and try to answer it as well as I can. I deal with social security in individual national schemes only incidentally, as examples or in the context of research studies by other academics.

Responsibilities of the state and legal professions

This contribution, which is based on the Dutch legal system, deals with the responsibilities of the State and legal professions in ensuring access to justice. The responsibilities of the four main players involved in bringing justice to the citizen are discussed: the legislator, the executive, the judiciary, and the legal profession. Responsibilities for access to justice do not only stem from the law, they do also evolve from societal problems and discussions. The contribution deals with both. Several actors share some of the responsibilities. One can think of responsibilities for information, for financing, and for being aware of vulnerabilities and other obstacles. What are the legal responsibilities and what other responsibilities are felt by the actors involved and how do they deal with them? And as a result: do they contribute to access to justice, do they form an obstacle, or both?