The Lack of Legal Protection of Union Rights on Termination of Fixed Term Academics at Public Universities in the Flemish Community of Belgium. Admissibility Issues of an Application Based on the Framework Agreement on Fixed-term Work at Public Universities in the Assessment by the Supreme Administrative Court of Belgium

The question of sufficient protection of academics employed with successive fixed-term employment contracts or relationships in the university sector had been raised in several procedures before the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereafter: CJEU). These cases deal with the substantive basis of the claims of the academics. Admissibility of their claims was not an issue. Unlike the research dealing with the substantive basis of the claims of academics based on the Framework agreement on fixed-term work, this article deals with a ruling on the admissibility of the plea based on the Framework agreement on fixed-term work encountered by academics in the Flemish Community of Belgium. The article first outlines the exception from general labour law in the Higher Education Code of the Flemish Community of Belgium that allows universities to employ academics indefinitely with fixed-term relationships through the practice of a mosaic combination of a part-time statutory employment under administrative law and a part-time contractual employment under labour law. It then discusses the impact of the exceptions on the admissibility of claims for damages, compensation and reinstatement by fixed-term academics at a Flemish public university based on the violation of Council Directive 1999/70/EC and Framework agreement on fixed-term work concluded by ETUC, UNICE and CEEP brought before the Council of State, which is the supreme administrative court of Belgium. The author argues that the Belgian Council of State incorrectly applied Directive 1999/70/EC and the Framework agreement on fixed-term work in judgment no. 247.434 of April 21, 2020, while it was – in its capacity of supreme administrative court of Belgium – under the obligation of Article 267 TFEU to refer for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU. The refusal by the Belgian Council of State to refer questions for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU and a wrong interpretation of Union law could result i. a. in State liability for damage resulting from breach of its obligations under Community law whereas the CJEU could have helped the Belgian Council of State in a preliminary ruling to determine the concept of ‘successive’ employment relationships, preventive measures and measures to punish abuse of fixed term contracts in Flemish universities, rule whether the articles in the Flemish Higher Education Code on vacancies and employment of fixed-term academic staff violate the Council Directive 1999/70/EC and Framework agreement on fixed-term work, and whether national Belgian procedural law makes the application for fixed-term academic staff at a Flemish public university virtually impossible or excessively difficult and therefore incompatible with the principle of effectiveness of Union law.

Being a journalist in a multilingual country: Representations of Dutch among Belgian French-speaking journalists

In this paper, we examine how the francophone TV audience is introduced to the Flemish community and its language through daily news broadcasts. More specifically, our research looks at how the Dutch language is used when francophone journalists prepare and produce their reports – during all stages of the process –, up until the actual broadcast. We therefore conducted 15 qualitative interviews with TV news journalists employed by the Belgian French-speaking public broadcaster. The interviews were organized around eight topics, e.g. the place of Dutch in the newsroom and the languages chosen during interactions with Dutch-speaking interviewees. From a discursive point of view, we focused on the selected lexical terms and rhetorical tropes (the various uses of the litotes, in particular) to unpack the journalists’ practices, in relation to their representations of Dutch. Our study provides notable insights into their representation of the differences between French- and Dutch-speaking Belgians as a generational issue, their tendency to assess their proficiency in Dutch measured against bilingualism, as well as their wish to beat the cliché of “the unilingual French-speaker”. These observations are coupled with criteria which explain why French might be preferred in the end: the TV audience’s comfort, general intelligibility and subtitling constraints.