Abstract

Soft law is now part of the rules through which the EU has set up a deep reform of its own governance. From the labour law point of view, the soft law is a new phenomenon that, with the start up of the European employment strategy, is now siding the more traditional instruments of the hard law. In this essay, nature and functions of soft law are explained in the community labour law, highlighting that the major objective is not the harmonization of the national legal systems, but the co-ordination of the policies of the Member States. Starting from the position expressed by the Italian Government in the White paper on labour maket, the last part of the essay considers the use of soft law as alternative instrument to hard law in the Italian labour system.