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SENSE in transnational transport in the EU
SENSE in transnational transport in the EU
Start date: Dec 1, 2016,
End date: Aug 31, 2019
PROJECT
FINISHED
SENSE makes transport more Social, rules better ENforceable, the sector of international transport more Sustainable and, because of the Legal Navigation App, all of this will be made Easy. The EU transport sector is a genuine transnational sector. It involves many countries, each having its own different economic, social and legal systems. If goods are transported from the Netherlands to Poland and vice versa, transport work is carried out in different countries whilst it is indifferent for the purpose of moving these goods to either engage a Dutch or a Polish company. The choice of company and in particular where it is established, however, does have major economic, social and legal consequences for the countries, companies, employees and other stakeholders involved, for instance favouring Polish transport companies above companies established in the BeNeLux countries. The freedom to make such choices is accepted and forms part of fundamental EU freedoms, such as free movement of goods and services. At the same time, if these choices are solely made on the basis of the costs of labour, this may result in ‘abuse’ of the rules, commonly referred to as social dumping. Here, we see a potential clash between EU freedoms on the one hand and protection of employment and social standards of Member States (MS) on the other. If this clash is too hard or happens too often stability within the EU is at stake, whilst MS might take actions to prevent social dumping by margining or even leaving the fundamental EU principles (e.g. the current Brexit discussion in the UK). Perhaps surprisingly, there are great gaps in knowledge and education of the complications in the social and legal policy field concerning EU international transportation. The knowledge present in different MS is scattered. Cooperation between universities and other stakeholders is scarce and high quality education unavailable. This underlines the need In Europe for high quality trained professionals able to solve the problems at hand and develop best practices.SENSE aims to solve problems arising in the field of EU transnational transportation, by providing an international programme, containing different modules on ‘transnational employment within the transport sector in the EU’. This will offer adequate understanding of the legal setting, not just at a single national level, but also at EU and multinational/comparative level, by developing and implementing state of the art education and by working with an innovative Legal Navigation App. SENSE clarifies the legal aspects of transnational transport from multiple perspectives and educates (future) professionals. SENSE will be applicable to all transnational social and economic areas, for instance construction work which makes it easy to up scale the project to other fields of relevance after completion. SENSE underlines the EU policy New Skills for New Jobs as it tackles the problem that legal professionals in Europe need new innovative teaching and training in this relatively unexplored area of EU law. SENSE will make a significant to the specific objective of the Erasmus + Programme, to foster quality improvements, innovation excellence and internationalisation at the level of education and training institutions, in particular through enhanced transnational cooperation between education and training providers and other stakeholders. SENSE will improve the quality and relevance of higher education in the field of EU worker mobility law and social policy, with a special focus on the international transport sector. Students involved will be able to keep up with future developments (learning to learn) and (future) professionals will be equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in their high-skilled occupations. Therefore, the SENSE project also contributes to the Erasmus+ priority of developing a European Area of Skills and Qualifications. Evidenced based educational and pedagogic methods will be applied during the courses, mainly problem based learning.SENSE will provide the educational and pedagogic basis for better understanding and responding to new challenges regarding worker mobility in the EU transnational transport sector. The involvement of different countries, with their own legal and social systems asks for a true European approach, combining national issues and circumstances from an EU perspective. This will strengthen Europe as a whole and prevent that social dumping will be the end result of EU fundamental. Furthermore, the Legal Navigation App will be an astonishing and innovative end result, that will not only by used for educational purposes, but mainly to help the transport sector and policy makers to make more SENSE in the transport area (better enforcement, better understanding of the problem hence better policy making).