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).
The SENSE project and its objective The Erasmus+ SENSE project was comprised of the following partners: Luca Ratti (Univeristy of Luxembourg), Amber Zwanenbrug, Rouben Houwling and Zef Even (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Mijke Houwerzijl (Tilburg University), Herwig Verschueren and Bartłomiej Bednarowicz (University of Antwerp) and Monika Tomaszewska and Michał Szypniewski (University of Gdańsk). The main objective of the SENSE project was to solve problems arising in the field of EU transnational transportation by providing 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 innovative tools: a Legal Navigation App. SENSE clarifies the legal aspects of transnational transport from multiple perspectives and educates (future) professionals. Combining state of the art knowledge, students, lecturers and professionals allows entering into a dialogue on actual topics from different national perspectives. This cooperation was to enlarge staff mobility and bridge the world of education with the world of non-educational stakeholders. Jointly, the partner law schools developed an international programme, containing different modules on ‘Cross-Border Road Transport in EU Law Context’ that is accessible to all. In essence, the SENSE Project aspired to make SENSE in transitional transport in the EU. SENSE aimed to make 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. Rationale behind SENSE Perhaps surprisingly, there are still 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 Member States is scattered. Cooperation between universities and other stakeholders is scarce and high-quality education is often unavailable. Problems show that Europe urgently needs properly trained professionals able to solve the problems at hand and develop best practices. First end result: Transnational collaboration in education makes SENSE (teaching modules) SENSE thus contributed to innovations in the transport sector. Current national programmes in law only provide courses in national law and EU law separately. An integral vision on the interaction of EU freedoms with social rights at the national level is lacking which puts change and innovation on hold. This project educates modern and versatile professionals able to think outside the boundaries of national law. These new professionals will not think and work as “we” and “them” but from an integrated transnational perspective. Operating at the interface of European and national law will broaden the horizon of students and teachers, break traditional patterns in education and bring refreshing insights on how problems are solved in other countries. SENSE focuses on the sector in which the challenges are arguably the greatest and the solutions the most difficult to find. The Strategic Partnership is fully linked with the needs of the transport sector, i.e. based on on-going input from stakeholders. Their positive response proves that this program is an important step in realizing an upgrade of skills and knowledge. The modules will improve the ability of (future) professionals to keep up with new developments (learning to learn) and will be used in the partners’ academic education to improve the quality of the curricula. The free online MOOC is available to everyone (https://www.coursera.org/learn/transport-eu-law) and all the other Project materials are accessible online as well (www.project-sense.eu/teaching-modules/). We have already reached thousands of learners, and with the online open access course remaining available in the future this will only increase further. Second end result: Legal Navigation App makes even more SENSE The Project developed a prototype for the Legal Navigation App. The App is designed to monitor exactly in which countries the transnational work is performed and for which time periods. It also provides the legal consequences such as applicable working and resting time, wages and offers further information on how to obtain more help and assistance thanks to the cooperation with the social partners in the transport sector. For more information on the App, please visit: http://www.project-sense.eu/legal-navigation-app/. The results of our project can be viewed on our website and are presented in the dissemination video, which can be found on: http://www.project-sense.eu.