Concurrent liabilities and jurisdiction over individual contracts of employment under the Brussels Ia Regulation

This article sets out to map the different tests, and their corresponding theoretical foundations, used for determining whether the employment section of the Brussels Ia Regulation applies to concurrent liabilities. Thereby it will explicate the often unspoken theories that inform seemingly straightforward approaches to characterisation on which the applicability of the employment section to concurrent liabilities hinges. It argues that the preferable way forward is the “material link test”, under which the employment section should apply insofar as the facts underlying a claim have a material link to an employment relationship in terms of time, place, means or purpose. Other solutions, which are centred on the indispensability of interpreting the employment contract or the nature of a claim’s legal basis, are to be disregarded as ineffective and overly complex.