Jurisprudence Community n'émeut generally not public, so disconnected from each other's concerns, though encumbered with terminology and arcane procedural device. Sometimes, however, decisions hit reality with force. Evidence is two stops that were echoed in the media unprecedented Northern Europe: business Laval and Viking .
These two decisions show strong similarities. Both made in late 2007, they address the same problem, namely the tension between freedom of community services and national labor law. To summarize the idea as simply put, the European Community has set a goal of liberalization in the 27. By liberalization, understand that we try to ensure the absolute movement of certain entities. These entities can be people, goods, capital or services. The objective is to equalize the conditions of market access for all European citizens. For example, a lawyer holds a French degree should be able to provide its legal service in another member state, with equal treatment with respect to the locally trained lawyer. Conversely we could not accept any discrimination based on nationality. Thus a member state can not legislate to impede the import of certain products from other European countries, under any false pretext. The liberalization of services, carried by the famous Bolkestein directive known , obeys the same logic.
However, this liberalization is often frightening. The idea that nightmare could be carried into the idea of social dumping . Imagine posting an Estonian company employees in Sweden, for example, to ensure service school construction. It respects a collective agreement in Estonia. We want him to sign a Swedish collective agreement, but she stubbornly refused. Strikes followed, everything goes to litigation, an appeal is lodged with the ECJ, and ultimately a decision is made to give harm to Swedish pretensions. Here summarized roughly the Laval. The direct practical consequence of this is so that the Estonian company can pay its employees posted in accordance with conventional SMIC Estonian, Swedish territory. One imagines the yawning gap that can separate the two states, and the anguish of Swedish workers before this terrible competition created thereby. The risk would be willing, by the desire to preserve the competitiveness of workers want to bring the wages down.
If Viking is very close. It was a Finnish shipping company Vikingline, seeking to register one of its ships to Estonia. This would obviously reduce its labor costs by employing staff to lower costs. Followed it a protest and a union dispute, which eventually led to a Community decision vindicating the service provider. Again the fear of social dumping is heightened.
These two cases mark the spirits because they seem politically symbolic. Finland and Sweden, two countries described as among the models most protective of employees, are denied the relevance of their collective rules in favor of a liberal Europe, and for the states of Eastern Europe, although the costs lighter. And it seems in practice to allow some social dumping. Commentators have often been surprised and critical vis-à-vis the reasoning conducted by the Community Courts. It would have been desirable, no doubt, to go beyond the letter of the law to reach a spirit more social. Watching.
Lund to French. 
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