Book Review: Health and Human Rights by Brigit Toebes, et al.

Abstract

Labour Authority established in 2019, and the Commission’s proposal for a minimum wage Directive of October 2020 are discussed. Furthermore, the new edition manages to add an overview chapter on competition law and labour law, and a chapter on General Data Protection Regulation, since the Data Protection Directive was missing from the previous edition. Considering the size of the volume, it is impossible to delve further content-wise. It can be stated, however, that the volume is true to its title, i.e., the author and his assistants have done a remarkable systematic exposition of European employment law. Although, as a systematic exposition, the book is mostly descriptive, in this reviewer’s opinion, it is excellently written, not only linguistically, but sufficiently condensed and sticking to the essential necessary details, successfully avoiding an inflated information overkill. There are no noteworthy shortcomings of the book. The book is written in an understandable manner and is very informative. The relevant legal Acts and their intertwinement are clearly outlined, showing the historical development(s), various theoretical positions and the adopted case law. The individual chapters are logically laid out, with several sub-sections and points. The paragraphs are numerically marked and enable the ease of referencing. Moreover, the more important parts of the text are in bold, allowing the readers to pinpoint to a certain issue much more time-efficiently. Overall, the volume has an extraordinary amount of references, especially from scholarship (albeit predominantly in German). If one were to seek further information on a specific issue, it would be extremely difficult to find a body of work more detailed than the current volume, the same being true likewise for the referenced CJEU case law and its development. However, readers should not expect to find any didactic material in the volume, for instance, cases that students could try to solve. In this reviewer’s opinion, the book is an indispensable tool and a must have and most definitely recommended for everyone who is dealing with European employment law (in practice) or is interested in it. This most likely relates to (advanced) students, academics or practitioners in particular, and applies not only to those who do not yet have the reviewed volume, but also to those who possess the previous (first) edition. The current volume is much larger and contains nearly a decade of added information developments. Due to the never-ending developments in EU law, where employment law is no exception, and considering that the content of the volume dates until March 2021, it is signalled in the series’ preface that a third edition is foreseen. Hopefully, it will be welcomed slightly sooner than a decade from now. With this in mind, the present volume will prove to be most useful until then.