Is the EU effectively defending citizens’ rights? In a report published in March 2024, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) make a rather encouraging observation: “The past five years have seen a renewed interest in social Europe, leading to important and long-awaited political initiatives, particularly on minimum wages, employment platforms and corporate obligations,” say Esther Lynch, ETUC’s general secretary, and Bart Vanherke, ETUI’s head of research.
change of direction
write world May 30, 2024 (“Social Europe is rarely included in European campaigns.Economist Bruno Coquet notes that “social goals have often been secondary, as Europe’s building block has favored expansion rather than deepening, focusing on the free movement of goods, services, people and capital. Regularly buffeted by structural challenges (deindustrialization, ageing populations, etc.) and cyclical challenges (unemployment, financial crises, social inequality, etc.),[national leaders]have occasionally been called upon to reaffirm Europe’s social ambitions.”
This is especially true when you consider that a recent Eurobarometer survey found that 88% of EU citizens said a social Europe was important.
The clearest example of this dynamic is the European Pillar of Social Rights, adopted in 2017, which lays the foundation for future legislation, focusing on quality jobs, education and essential services, and on eliminating precarious working conditions.
“In a European building that focuses on the free movement of goods, services, people and capital, social goals have often been relegated to second place, favoring expansion over deepening.” – Bruno Coquet
One outcome of this new policy framework is the Directive on Minimum Wages, adopted in October 2022. It does not seek to impose a uniform minimum wage across the EU (leaving that up to the member states), but aims to ensure that minimum wages converge upwards across all countries.
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Fundamentally, the text seeks to ensure that minimum wages are sufficient to ensure an adequate standard of living. Specifically, it requires Member States to promote collective bargaining on wages, strengthen the bargaining capacity of employers and employees, and protect workers and organizations that participate in such discussions. Countries with less than 80% coverage of collective bargaining are required to prepare action plans to increase this.
“It’s a fundamentally different vision from the one that was prevalent a decade ago,” says Agnieszka Piasna, an expert on European employment policy. “Since the 2008 crisis, wages, job quality and collective bargaining have been seen as costs and obstacles. This directive therefore reflects a change in the discourse on the social dimension of the EU, which was previously dominated by neoliberal market concepts that had a major impact on industrial relations and social protection.”
The directive is due to be adopted by the Member States in November 2024. “We can already see that even before it has been formally adopted into national law, it is having a positive impact on the upward trend of minimum wages in several countries,” observes Agnieszka Piasna.
There have been other developments, too. The EU’s 2019 work-life balance directive gives both parents the right to take time off work to care for their children.
The 2023 Pay Transparency Guidelines were an important step forward for gender equality. The text requires corrective action to be taken if an evaluation reveals a pay gap of more than 5%. It also provides employees who are victims of discrimination with the right to compensation.
Finally, the proposed Platform Work Directive is seen as a first step towards regulating working conditions in the digital sector. It seeks to ensure that people working through internet platforms have a properly defined employment status, beyond “fake self-employment.”
It will also prohibit companies from firing employees based on algorithmic decisions. Piasna is positive about this directive. “For a long time, platform work was seen as a technological innovation. Today, that is being questioned, and this is progress. The unions fought hard for it. It sends a strong message that no type of employment should be exempt from regulation.”
Post-pandemic economic stimulus plan
The EU’s social ambitions, driven by the Ursula von der Leyen Commission, have been clearly revealed during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The post-pandemic recovery package did more than simply suspend budgetary rules. It used monetary instruments to fund its ambitious strategy and relaxed rules on state aid and borrowing,” explains Bart Vanherke, a social science expert and head of research at ETUI.
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Georg Fischer, the European Commission’s former head of social affairs, writes that lessons were learned after the 2008 financial crisis. “During the pandemic, the EU set up the SURE programme (Support for Mitigating Unemployment Risks in Emergencies), which provided financial support (€100 billion) to national job retention programmes so that Member States with limited budgetary resources could pay to keep workers in the labour market. The Commission’s assessment found that these countries (and the EU as a whole) recorded higher employment and much lower unemployment than expected in relation to the decline in economic activity.”
This analysis is shared by Agnieszka Piasna, who points out that it has taken just two years to return to pre-Covid employment levels, compared to almost a decade after the 2008 crisis. But she remains cautious. “Investment is essential to make progress on social and environmental fronts. However, while many instruments integrate social policies, they do not legally guarantee that there will be no changes in the future, either related to austerity measures or a new European Commission.”
Future environmental and social challenges
The environmental crisis is a critical imperative. “By reforming budgetary rules, the EU would miss the opportunity to achieve a genuine balance between budget, ecology and social objectives, and would risk a return to austerity,” said the authors of Benchmarking Working Europe, an annual report published by ETUI and the European Trade Union Confederation.
Against this backdrop, ETUI urges EU countries to adopt progressive taxation and to establish sustainable investment mechanisms within the EU itself to “ensure Member States’ ability to achieve their social and ecological objectives”.
Other areas still need attention. One example is precarious employment, which mainly affects unskilled young people and immigrants. “These people have been at increased risk of poverty in recent years. We need to do more to ensure that migrant workers, whether from the EU or third countries, have access to quality jobs,” says Piasna.
This social mandate is imposed on European trade unions, but not only on them. And there is more to be done. Protecting workers’ representation is essential to reducing the gap between Eastern and Western Europe. More generally, it will be an important component of any strategy to address the entire picture of social ills.
