Department of Private, Business & Labour Law (PBLL)
Welcome to the Department of Private, Business & Labour Law, at the crossroads of private relationships, entrepreneurship and sustainability our department aims to provide high-quality research and education in private law, business law and labour law.
Team up with our research activities
In the triangle of Private, Business and Labour Law our department conducts innovative and original research within our Signature Plan Connecting Organizations, connecting the key areas of expertise of our department, combined with Fiscal Law. In the Signature Plan we investigate how new models and strategies of organizing business and economic activities (e.g. platforms, networks, blockchains) are regulated by the law and whether that regulation needs rethinking in the light of modern society, in which sustainability, technology and servitization become ever more dominant drivers of change.
Existing legal frameworks, including rules stemming from contract law, company law, insolvency law, labour law, (intellectual) property law, tax law, and/or tort law, may not sit well with these developments. Accordingly, they can impede innovation.
However, the legitimate interests that these legal frameworks safeguard (e.g. social rights for consumers and workers) may require updating or new interpretation of the underpinning rules in order to ensure continued protection.
Our department is successful in securing research funding from, inter alia, personal funding from NWO, and funding from Horizon 2020. Our researchers have furthermore written research reports for, among others, the WODC and various ministries. Our researchers are active in national and international research. While our primary focus is on legal research, we actively encourage interdisciplinary research.
We stimulate collaboration in research and create added value for society by bringing the right people together to work on challenging and meaningful problems and by developing innovative solutions.
Read more about our research
Study with us
In line with our research the department of Private, Business & Labour Law teaches a large proportion of courses in the bachelor and master of Dutch Law, and the Global Law Bachelor program. The Department furthermore coordinates and teaches the Bachelor Dutch Business Law and the English Master programs International Business Law: Digital Innovation in Commerce and Finance and Labour law and Employment Relations.
In addition, we provide a large number of courses within other programs of Tilburg Law School, and for Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tias Business School and the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS).
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News
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Introduction to labor mobility in the EU: where does regulation fail?
27th November 2023Important bottlenecks in the regulation of labor mobility within the EU are that the powers of national compliance bodies are limited to their own national borders, how to act against rogue intermediaries and how to tackle letterbox constructions effectively.
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Sustainability and sustainability reporting
21st November 2023The new European sustainability reporting requirements can definitely be called revolutionary and pose enormous challenges to the business world. In this newly published contribution in the NJW (2023, no. 490), Christoph Van der Elst and Steffie van den Bosch highlight the new reporting framework. Undoubtedly big business, hopefully it is also sufficiently sustainable.
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Iris van Oosterhout receives FJR publication award
20th November 2023Iris van Oosterhout has been awarded the FJR publication prize! She received the prize for her article 'Freedom, equality and non-binarity' in the NJB (2023/114). The prize is awarded annually for the best scholarly publication by a young researcher (under 35) in the field of family and juvenile law.
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Editorial Wim Weterings in AV&S on insurance and sustainability
17th November 2023Issue 4 of the magazine Aansprakelijkheid, Verzekering & Schade (AV&S)) features an editorial by Wim Weterings titled "Verzekeraar, duurzaamheid en ESG: een goed idee!"
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Multinationals have a responsibility to take care of people and planet throughout their production networks
30th October 2023Multinationals have a duty to prevent or reduce foreseeable negative impacts on workers, communities and the environment, even if these impacts are caused by other actors in their production networks. That is the position Professor of Private Law Paul Verbruggen takes in his inaugural address at Tilburg University on Friday, November 3, 2023.