On Tuesday 14 January, the S&D and The Left groups in the European Parliament expressed their concerns about the Opinion of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU on the directive on adequate minimum wages, which he has proposed be annulled (see EUROPE 13557/22).
The Spanish President of the S&D, Iratxe García Pérez, said on X that “the EU must be able to protect working people against a race to the bottom”.
“At a time when citizens are calling - and rightly so! - for a more social Europe in a political and economic context where free competition is wreaking havoc, I want to believe that the Court of Justice will not make the position binding and will therefore not follow this opinion against the directive on ‘adequate minimum wages’, which would represent an extremely serious step backwards in terms of worker protection and would send out a disastrous signal towards even more deregulation and social dumping”, reacted Belgian MEP Estelle Ceulemans.
The Left believes that this opinion “is a dangerous step towards dismantling key protections for workers across Europe. It aligns with the European Commission’s competitiveness agenda, which cares more about profit over people”.
This is “terrible news for all of us who are fighting for social rights and workers’ rights in Europe, as this opinion will surely be used by national governments and right-wing forces in Europe to drop the social agenda altogether”, also commented Li Andersson from Finland, who chairs Parliament’s Committee on Employment. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)