Nicolas Rennuy

Research

Overview

I specialise in EU social security law and free movement law. Much of my work seeks to understand and evaluate EU social benefits law in the light of ideas borrowed from e.g. private international law and EU administrative law. Very broadly, I’m interested in how law, designed in and for one legal system, works in cases that have ties to other legal systems.

Having completed a study on posted workers and social dumping, I’m working on social security coordination post-Brexit. Another project tests the value of mechanisms of private international law for the coordination of public law through a case study on the interface between tax and social security law.

I’ve published in leading journals and presses such the Common Market Law Review, the European Law Review and Oxford University Press. One of my papers won the Common Market Law Review Prize for Young Academics 2020; another was the Runner-up for the Best Paper Prize of the Society of Legal Scholars 2016. My work has been cited by Advocates General at the Court of Justice of the European Union.

I sit on the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Social Security.

Keen to engage with policy-makers, I act as Parliamentary Academic Fellow for the House of Commons, looking at the effects of Brexit on social security coordination. As an Analytical Expert for MoveS—a European Commission-funded research network—I’ve co-authored several reports and an impact assessment. I’m a Senior Advisor for a project funded by the European Labour Authority.

I’m eager to discuss projects with prospective PhD students, especially in the following areas:

• Migrants’ access to welfare benefits
• Free movement of persons and EU citizenship
• The implications of Brexit for the cross-border mobility of people
• Private international law/conflict of laws
• Transnational law

Publications

Selected publications

• ‘Posted Workers, Judges and Smokescreens: Narrowing the Gap in Judicial Control’ (2022) European Law Review, 463–481
• ‘Shopping for social security law in the EU’ (2021) Common Market Law Review, 13–38
• ‘Posting of workers: Enforcement, compliance, and reform’ (2020) European Journal of Social Security, 212–234
• ‘The trilemma of EU social benefits law: Seeing the wood and the trees’ (2019) Common Market Law Review, 1549–1590

For a complete list of publications, click on the above link to the York Research Database.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• EU Law (subject leader)
• Private International Law (module leader)
• Dissertations (supervisor)

Postgraduate

• Private International Law (module leader)
• Dissertations (supervisor)

I currently co-supervise one PhD student.

I’m the Chair of the Board of Examiners.

External activities

Overview

Academic consultancy

• Parliamentary Academic Fellow for the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee
• Analytical Expert for MoveS (a European Commission-funded research network)
• Senior Advisor for a project funded by the European Labour Authority

Memberships

• Editorial Board of the European Journal of Social Security
• Society of Legal Scholars
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy