Type: Opinions of the Advocate general

Authority: European Authorities: Euopean Communities' Court of Justice

Date: 01/21/2009

Subject: The Advocate general proposed that the Court should answer the questions affirming that the Directive 98/59 does not preclude national rules which, in a case where the information and consultation procedure has not been observed, restrict to the workers’ representatives alone the right to challenge collective redundancies, or which make the right of an individual worker to challenge collective redundancies conditional upon the workers’ representatives having made an objection. The Directive does, however, preclude national rules which allow collective redundancies to be challenged only for certain specified breaches of the obligations prescribed by the Directive and not for all breaches of those obligations. The principle of the right to effective judicial protection does not preclude legislation which, in the case of collective redundancies, frames the right to information and consultation as a collective right and consequently, in the event of a breach of that right, allows only the workers’ representatives and not the individual workers to bring an action. If, however, the right to information and consultation is conceived as an individual right in national law, the principle of the right to effective judicial protection precludes legislation which allows that right to be asserted only by the workers’ representatives, or which makes individual action conditional upon a prior objection having been made by the workers’ representatives.

Parties: Mono Car Styling SA

Classification: Solidarity - Art. 27 Worker’s rights: information - Justice - Art. 47 Justice: effective

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Notices: Effectiveness of the Charter
The Advocate general did not take into consideration the value of the Charter, but invoked it to confirm the existence of fundamental rights within the EU order.