The European Social Charter Turns 60: Advancing Economic and Social Rights Across Jurisdictions

To apprehend and advance theoretical framing of the impact of the European Social Charter on the protection of economic and social rights in Europe, this Special Section brings together legal expertise in different fields of law (from international law to EU law, from constitutional law to labor law). In this context, the authors have engaged in cutting-edge research in their respective fields through an interdisciplinary perspective. Moreover, the Special Section engages in a plurality of tasks. Some contributions mainly address the procedural paths through which ESC rights interplay with rights from other sources, analyzing the legal value of ECSR’s pronouncements, while others propose an interpretative methodology aimed at enhancing effective protection of socio-economic rights ensuing from the Charter throughout different European legal orders. Approaching multi-sourced protection of social rights in Europe from the side of procedural guarantees, dynamics of concurrent or complementary activation in the vertical or horizontal dimension may be clarified. Other contributions focus instead on the contents of those rights which have most recently provided fertile grounds for cross-sectional investigations and comparative analyses, such as equal pay and protection of workers from unlawful dismissals. Focusing on substantive protection, rights-specific studies help identify which contents emerge from the interaction of multi-sourced norms of protection or from the isolation of certain sources from others.