The Executive Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) met, on Thursday 9 September, in an extraordinary videoconference session to determine the way forward to defend social dialogue at European level.
The Court of Justice of the EU ruled, earlier this month, that the European Commission was not obliged to comply with a request from the social partners to present a proposal for a decision to the EU Council on the basis of the Agreement reached between the social partners (see EUROPE 12782/14). This is a slap in the face for the social partners, who see it as a weakening of the social dialogue at European level.
The situation is made even more unclear by the European Parliament’s recent legislative own-initiative report on the right to disconnect, which, on the contrary, leaves the European Commission no choice as to how to follow up on the respect of an Agreement between social partners (see EUROPE 12640/12).
As a result, the trade unions adopted a resolution that sets out a roadmap to secure the right of initiative for social partner agreements. Among other things, they will try to reach an agreement with the employers’ representatives on the European Work Programme 2022-2024.
At the same time, they call for the implementation of the report by Andrea Nahles (see EUROPE 12651/21) to clarify the social dialogue rules and procedures in order to avoid problems of interpretation of the Court’s judgements, and to clarify the rules and procedures in Decision 98/500/EC on sectoral social dialogue.
The Conference on the Future of Europe also seems to be the ideal forum for amending the European treaties with a view to clarifying the status of European social dialogue and safeguarding the autonomy of the social partners.
For the full resolution: https://bit.ly/2XeYPo7 (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)