Su alcune incoerenze e aporie delle norme di conflitto dell’UE in materia di rapporti di lavoro

The contribution, included in the volume of essays in honour of Professor Luigi Daniele, focuses on the body of conflict-of-law rules progressively developed by European Union law, highlighting the ongoing difficulty of bringing such provisions within an integrated and coherent normative “system”. These inconsistencies and aporias can, moreover, also be found within the conflict-of-law rules relating to a single field, as demonstrated by those laid down in Regulation No. 593/2008 concerning employment relationships. Article 8 of that Regulation appears, in fact, to pursue different, and in some respects heterogeneous, objectives, for the achievement of which it employs a variety of private international law techniques (priority recourse to party autonomy, subject to limitations dictated by material considerations; use of connecting factors based both on abstract localization and on localization linked to the principle of proximity). Starting from this observation, the contribution suggests a number of solutions aimed at directing the application of Article 8 towards a more consistent protection of the socially weak party involved in such relationships, focusing, in its concluding part, on the role of the escape clause provided for in Article 8(4) of the Regulation, and questioning whether it too performs a protective function or is instead merely proximity-focused.