European social standards in the era of labour digitalisation

Abstract

The article examined European social standards for the protection of individual labour rights through the prism of the jurisprudence of the European Committee of Social Rights in the context of labour digitalisation, the expansion of platform work, and the transformation of contemporary employment relations. The relevance of the study was determined by the need to adapt national labour law systems to modern socio-economic challenges and to ensure the effective implementation of the standards of the European Social Charter in Ukraine during the period of war and European integration processes. The purpose of the article was to analyse the transformation of individual labour rights from programmatic social guarantees into practical and effective subjective rights and to determine the impact of the jurisprudence of the European Committee of Social Rights on the development of modern labour law models. The study applied a combination of general scientific and special legal methods, included the legal-dogmatic method, comparativelegal method, functional approach, and qualitative content analysis of the decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights and contemporary legal scholarship. The research findings demonstrated that the concept of “practical and effective rights” has become the key mechanism for ensuring the real effectiveness of social rights within the European legal space. The study established that the recent practice of the European Committee of Social Rights gradually adapts the European social model to the challenges of algorithmic management and platform work. The article introduced the concept of “procedural non-compliance,” describing situations in which European standards are formally transposed into national legislation without the creation of effective enforcement mechanisms. It was substantiated that the primary threat to the effectiveness of social standards lies in the formalistic implementation of European norms without adequate institutional and financial support. The practical value of the study lies in developing recommendations for improving Ukrainian labour legislation, strengthening labour rights enforcement mechanisms, and ensuring the practical effectiveness of European social standards within the national legal system