The European Parliament and the Council of the EU met once again on Tuesday 26 April to discuss the directive on minimum wages, discussing at length the issue over the place of trade unions in the text, but not managing to achieve any major breakthroughs.
“We are still calculating trajectories in the hope of coming together” a European source said, referring to a long inter-institutional meeting that lasted all morning and into the early afternoon. Another source regretted the fact that little progress had been made: “It’s going slowly”.
Indeed, much of the discussion has focused on Article 4 of the directive, which promotes collective bargaining on wage setting.
The co-legislators have debated the definition of workers’ representatives, with the European Parliament keen to avoid “yellow unions”. The EU Council noted in respect of this that the concept of worker representation was used in major European texts such as the European pillar of social rights (Principle 8 on social dialogue and worker participation).
In particular, the European Parliament has introduced a whole series of provisions in this article (line 63a in the four-column table – see EUROPE 12933/10) that directly relate to the exercise of trade unions. However, the European Parliament’s proposals go beyond – from the EU Council’s point of view – the original objective of the directive. This is a text that primarily relates to minimum wages and not to the conditions under which trade unions operate.
The European Parliament’s proposals would risk shifting the directive onto another legal basis that would require unanimous decision-making in the EU Council, according to the analysis of one source. This is something neither side wants, not least because of the outright opposition of some Nordic countries, particularly Denmark (Sweden has finally softened its position – see EUROPE 12847/1).
The co-legislators also discussed Article 5, which deals with the adequacy of statutory minimum wages – “the heart of the matter” – as one source told us. Here, the challenge is to draft the text in such a way as to have an “effect on reality”, while at the same time preserving what already exists.
By way of reminder, the European Parliament has added a criterion to take into account the national basket of goods and services. The problem, we were told, is that there is no harmonised definition at European level.
Similarly, the deletion by the European Parliament of the criterion relating to the rate of labour productivity causes various difficulties on the part of the EU Council. In the eyes of this institution, it is, in fact, a cardinal element of a portfolio of macroeconomic indices for monitoring minimum wages.
Furthermore, the European Parliament’s intention to introduce the concept of ‘in-work poverty’ would pose technical problems, since it would be a ‘composite’ index of a different nature to that which is proposed by the European Commission, insofar as it would be calculated at household level and not at worker level.
Similarly, the European Parliament's proposal to use 60% of the gross median wage and 50% of the gross average wage as a basis for calculating minimum wages, is disliked by the EU Council. On the one hand, this reference would become a standard – setting it within the body of the text would add legal value – while on the other hand, it would be far from perfect for determining the adequacy of minimum wages.
As for Article 6, which concerns variations and deductions on minimum wages – an article that has been deleted by the European Parliament – the co-legislators would not have had time to discuss this subject in any level of depth at this last meeting.
The date of the next interinstitutional meeting has not yet been set, although 10 May has been mooted. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)