ABSTRACT
In a document heavily loaded towards economic policy, Article 119 of the EEC Treaty of 1957 laid down, within its brief, undeveloped social policy provisions, that the Member States should bring into effect national rules to ensure ‘the application of the principle that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work’. For many years, however, some Member States failed to implement this principle and it required action by the Court of Justice in the mid-1970s to put teeth into Article 119 (now 141).
