[Book review] Filip Dorssemont, Klaus Lörcher, Stefan Clauwaert and Mélanie Schmitt (Eds.), The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Employment Relation. Oxford: Hart Publishing. xx + 685 pages. ISBN 9781509922659. GBP 125.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) was first proclaimed twenty years ago in December 2000 and was given legal effect by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009. The CFR was to make fundamental rights visible within the EU legal framework. It was the first time the EU had given a text containing fundamental social rights the status of primary law. For European labour law scholars, the CFR was considered to signify a process of deconstruction of the traditional hierarchy of rights within EU law which prioritises economic over social rights. Academic commentaries writing in the 2000s hoped that the CFR's provisions, particularly those contained in the "Solidarity Chapter" (Title IV) could be used to develop a unifying ideology and normalisation of social standards, particularly when set against the backdrop of the European Commission's shift to new forms of governance in social policy-making as part of the Lisbon and Europe2020 Strategies.