Documents European Trade Union Confederation, Brussels 265 results

"A controversial legal opinion calling for the annulment of the Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages (AMWD) was based on a “historically mistaken” reading of EU law that failed to consider established case law.
Last month, Advocate General Emiliou delivered an Opinion on a case brought by Denmark against the European Parliament and the Council of the EU which called for the annulment of the entire Directive on the grounds “it is incompatible with Article 153(5) of the treaties.”
The ETUC rejects this argument and is looking to the Court to come to a different conclusion and not follow the non-binding proposals of the Advocate General, and instead to uphold the AMWD in its entirety for the following reasons:
The Advocate General reached his conclusions by failing to attach sufficient weight or even to recognise important aspects of the international and European legal framework or relevant case law;
The AG also ignores the social objectives the EU is obliged to deliver upon under the treaties in general and under Social Policy title in particular, as well as the specificities of social directives leaving sufficient flexibility to member states and social partners to reach those objectives while implementing the AMWD;
The methodology applied by the Advocate General furthermore demonstrates several shortcomings, together with certain inconsistencies and a lack of contextualisation;
The Advocate General relied on a literal and technical interpretation of the ‘pay' exclusion which is not consistent with the Treaties, EU secondary law and, in particular, the established case law of the CJEU"

"The survey was commissioned by the ETUC and carried out by Professors Countouris and De Stefano to explore options for new legal conceptual frameworks implied by the rise of ‘new forms of employment', and in particular from the growth of forms of work that fall outside traditional labour and social security protections.

The research has generated original data in the form of national reports from Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Germany and the UK. We therefore would like to thank those unions and national legal experts who provided feedback and material to the authors.

Starting with the question “who is a worker?”, the report identifies similarities and differences between the countries covered by the survey. In a following part, after a comparative perspective on the various legal status of self-employed workers, the researchers test national laws against various labour scenarios. The findings show that the self-employed category is increasingly populated by a heterogeneous group of workers with a weak position in the labour market which prevents them from having a strong organisational autonomy or independence in the marketplace.

The report also tackles the collective labour rights of self-employed workers as well as legal obstacles to collective bargaining due to restrictive interpretation of antitrust law.

In a final part it examines the various proposals and debates on this issue at national and EU level and as a conclusion it puts forward a proposal for a new “personal work relation” to be potentially supported by unions. This proposal defines the personal scope of application of labour law (broadly understood as including individual and collective labour law - therefore encompassing the right to organise and bargain collectively - but also employment equality law) as applicable to any person that is engaged by another to provide labour, unless that person is genuinely operating a business on her or his own account.

This extensive report will provide you with a useful insight and a comparative perspective on the situation of self-employed workers across Europe. This is even more important in view of the upcoming European elections, where the protection of all workers regardless of their status should be put at the centre of policy making."

"The central questions and main contextual background explored by this year's issue of Benchmarking are, at their core, fairly straightforward. Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions at once: a (perhaps less than obvious) economic policy transition best exemplified by the debates surrounding the EU economic governance framework (COM(2022) 583 final); a geopolitical transition, increasingly shaped by the ‘open strategic autonomy' debate (Akgüç 2021) and, of course, by the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine; and the two more readily acknowledged green and digital transitions. It is, however, becoming increasingly clear, as explored in greater detail in the following chapters, that these four transitions imply important trade-offs and have significant ramifications for the social dimension of the European project and for the livelihoods of European workers. These consequences are currently being ignored by the principal institutional actors that are shaping them and that, at times, have conflicting priorities.

The current inability on the part of governments and policy-makers, at a national and supranational level, to resolve the tensions inherent to these transitions is a major factor in determining what the following pages of this issue refer to as a ‘polycrisis'. We understand the current conjuncture as a ‘polycrisis' due to the presence of a series of multiple, separate crises happening simultaneously (e.g. a climate crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, a geopolitical crisis, etc.), due to the way in which these separate crises interact with each other (for instance the energy crisis and the climate crisis), and due to the extent to which they thus amplify each other's effects, in particular social and economic effects (the extent to which strained supply chains and externally driven inflationary pressures tend to magnify the shortcomings of current fiscal policies, for instance, as noted in the opening chapter). There is also a growing perception that resolving any of these crises in isolation may be a particularly arduous task and that cumulative responses must be identified.

This polycrisis is intimately linked to the inability of the ruling class to engage with what we identify here as the missing transition: the social transition. This issue of Benchmarking Working Europe engages critically with these four transitions and their effects and posits that only a transformative and ambitious social transition can break the current cycle of crisis after crisis and instead institutionalise what the issue refers to as ‘sustainable resilience'.

The four transitions – and the missing one
We are arguably witnessing four major discernible and disruptive transition processes that are shaking the kaleidoscope of the European project as it is currently still enshrined in the (fragile) constitutional consensus embodied by the Lisbon Treaty. The rather more obvious (but no less challenging) processes are the green and technological transitions. Yet, it is arguable that, most visibly since the suspension of parts of the Stability and Growth Pact, we have also been experiencing an economic policy (including a monetary policy) transition and – in connection with the supply chain shortages caused by Covid‑19 and its aftermath, and more markedly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine – a geopolitical transition linked to the developing concept of ‘open strategic autonomy'"

"The political agreement between the Council and the European Parliament has introduced new numerical debt and deficit benchmarks, mandating annual
reductions in debt and deficits that will require unnecessary budget cuts.
Comparing the political agreement on fiscal rules to estimated social and green investment gaps shows that only three countries (Denmark, Sweden, Ireland) can afford to meet social and green investment needs under these rules. Even if the grants under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) were to continue post-2026, only five countries (Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Croatia, and Lithuania) would be able to meet at least minimum social and green investments needs. To allow all member states to meet their social and green public investment needs, an additional €300-420bn a year (2.1-2.9% of EU GDP) annually would be needed."

"Strategic Litigation Guide for Trade Unions and Workers' Rights Litigation, and specifically strategic litigation, is already recognised by trade unions as an important, and sometimes the only, means to defend and advance trade union and worker's rights and interests. Efforts to engage in relevant cases to defend rights have increasingly benefited from legal savviness with many active stakeholders working together. The aim of this Guide is to build on existing knowledge on how strategic litigation is successfully used, or not, bringing together insights from trade unions and workers' rights and other related fields, such as human rights, to offer accessible legal and practical information that could benefit various actors in the field.

The principal goal is to offer guidance in understanding and applying strategic litigation, and to offer considerations to help you deciding whether you should pursue strategic litigation. The Guide brings together insights from international and European level remedies of both judicial and quasi-judicial nature. In Part I, the Guide aims to help you assess the legal and practical considerations from initiating a case and all through the final decisions and its aftermath. Part II aims to assist with legal details in offering the main procedural details relevant in determining whether your case can and should be heard at a particular avenue. Strategic litigation increases compliance with the law, strengthens existing rights by clarifying or filling gaps, and can be instrumental in overturning previous cases of detrimental effect for workers and trade unions. At the same time, it can be an expensive, time-consuming, and possibly a privileged avenue to defend or advance rights.

This Guide seeks to show all the nuances of strategic litigation in relation to the bodies and institutions relevant for trade unions and allow for informed decisions to be taken by lawyers, practitioners, and others who seek to engage in strategic litigation in this field. Ultimately, the aim of the Guide is to facilitate your work in making decisions whether to initiate a case and if you do, how to strategically build a map to lead to the intended favourable results."

"Competition practices are facing a growing range of criticisms amid concerns with corporate power at an all-time high. This raises a number of challenges, including adverse impact on sustainability issues and the widening of income inequalities. As far as the labour market dimension is concerned, the failure of competition policies and enforcers to assess and address the impact of growing corporate power on workers is contributing to lower employment, wages and working conditions.

This ETUC report raises questions about the apparent unwillingness of EU competition authorities to address the asymmetry of power between capital and labour. Demonstrating the shortcomings of competition policies with a narrow focus on only business efficiency and consumer interests, the study highlights the need for scrutiny of EU competition policies from a labour market perspective."

"This 2017 edition of Benchmarking working Europe focuses on the question 'overcoming cleavages across the EU?'. It analyses in four chapters and with the help of 58 visual graphs latest trends and outcomes of European policies in the areas of macro-economics, wages and collective bargaining, labour markets and, last but not least, social dialogue and workers' participation.
The Benchmarking working Europe 2017 demonstrates that the European Union is experiencing increasing social divergences and underlines the need for new policies that can generate higher living standards for all, based on fair integration and upwards convergence."