Externally Funded Projects

• Project of the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung: Whistleblowing in Labour Law - The Whistleblower Protection Directive of the European Union, Need for Implementation in German Law under Consideration of Data Protection Aspects and Protection of Trade Secrets

  The director of the legal working group of the IAAEU, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Monika Schlachter, received approval for a third-party funded project of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for the promotion of science in June 2020. The project is concerned with the protection of whistleblowers from the perspective of labour law, especially with the requirements of implementing the European directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law (Whistleblower Protection Directive). A particular focus is on the implications of data and trade secret protection. The project has a duration of 2 years and the funding amount is € 40,000. These funds will mainly be used to finance the position of a research assistant, who will particularly investigate the need for implementation in German law.
  
  

  Contact
  Thomas Lehnart
  Telephone: (+49) 651 / 201 - 4763
  E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

• The IAAEU Secures a Third-Party Funded Project from the DFG

  The Directors of the IAAEU, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Monika Schlachter and Prof. Dr. Laszlo Goerke, together with Prof. Dr. Lars Hornuf, were able to secure a third-party funded project from the German Research Foundation (DFG) in August 2017. The project deals with crowdsourcing as a new form of labour organisation and studies specifically the regulatory requirements and welfare effects of crowdsourcing. The research project is scheduled to run for 3 years with a funding of € 460,000.  These resources will be used primarily to fund three research positions with the duties of investigating economic and legal aspects of crowdfunding. The economic portion of the research project will be lead in large by Prof. Dr. Lars Hornuf, who, beginning on the 1st of October 2017, will be assuming a professorship at the University of Bremen.
  
  

  Contact
  Dr. Thomas Klein
  Telephone: (+49) 651 / 201 - 4746
  E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

• European Database Projects
  Since 1997, the legal team of the IAAEU has been compiling a list of references from journal articles and judicial decisions on European labour law. Through the evaluation of foreign and domestic publications, especially the publications from the IAAEU, this collection pursues the goal of maintaining an ongoing documentation of the reactions to decisions on labour law made by the European Court of Justice. Due to the individual statutory regulations of EU member nations, the reception of ECJ decisions varies. Furthermore, national judicial decisions relating to European labour law and the pertinent judicial journal articles are compiled. The evaluatory foundation for the database consists of the periodical collection (foreign and domestic) maintained by the IAAEU library. The resulting list of references is an important tool for comparative law research.
  Previously, the database could only be accessed by researchers on the premises of the IAAEU library. In order to assist external researchers in their literature search, the contents of the database have been made accessible through the internet. Beginning in May 2011 and extending for 30 months, the DFG has been providing financial support for data migration to an internet accessible platform.
  The new database can be found under europadatenbank.iaaeu.de and supports research in German, French and English.

• Working Beyond the Statutory Retirement Age
  One of many questions which must be asked in order attune working conditions to demographic change is the question of corrections to static statutory retirement ages. Although a substantial portion of workers wish to exit the labour market at the statutory retirement age (at the latest), an increasing tendency to remain employed beyond that age can be observed. Some employees view this as an attainment of professional freedom while others continue working for economic reasons. The legal framework, concerning working hours or the right of termination for example, is not currently well configured to deal with the employment of senior citizens. Firms which, in and of themselves, would be interested in employing experienced senior citizens beyond the statutory retirement age are thus concerned that the legal uncertainty could lead to problems. For this reason, a comparative study of the successful legal framework which currently exists in Nordic countries should be undertaken to establish if special rules for the employment of senior citizens need be created and when which rules these should be.
  Anti-discrimination laws are an important aspect of the option to remain employed as a senior citizen. The number of legal cases concerning age discrimination at the national and European level is high, indicating that a robust and dogmatic general consensus has not yet been reached. This makes it increasingly important to survey the current situation in such a way as to make the lines of legal development in EU member states transparent. In this year, the results concerning anti-discrimination laws for senior citizens in Finland will be published. The results for Sweden will follow. In addition to that, several participating researchers have already held presentations on the topic. This project is supported by the working group "Elder Law" at the University of Lund as well as Prof. Niklas Bruun from the University of Helsinki. A grant application for funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft over a period of 24 months has also been approved. In 2014 the DFG also approved a 24 month funding period. 
  
  Contact
  Ref. jur. Maike Weber
  E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  Telephone: (+49) 49 651 / 201 - 4185

• Labour Disputes in the Public Services
  The start of the project "Labour Disputes in the Public Services" has been delayed due to organizational difficulties within the project’s patron, the German Israeli Foundation. The project plan is to organize workshops which will be attended by all participating researchers, as well as national reporters, who will next need to be selected in cooperation with the GIF. The cooperation partner is Professor Mordehai Mironi from the University of Haifa. The project aims to present different possibilities for the practical maintenance of a balance between the interests of the companies, the general public and the right of the employees to engage in labour disputes. On the basis of the international guarantee that participation in labour disputes is a human right (ILO, UN, European Council), the conflict situation in different countries should be presented, a delineation of companies who can considered to public services should be made and a classification of the possibilities for limiting strikes in each country should be made. The final goal is to prepare information on the actual use of limitations on labour dispute and the legal framework upon which those limitations are built in such a way that the governments who wish to discuss new avenues of regulation have the comparative research upon which they can base those discussions.
  
  Contact
  Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Monika Schlachter
  E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  Telephone: (+49) 651 / 201 - 4751