Minimum wage, ok EU directive: what it provides

The draft EU directive on the minimum wage on which the Council and Parliament reached an agreement tonight in Strasbourg during the trialogue, as the interinstitutional negotiation on legislative texts is called, does not include the obligation to introduce a minimum wage in all countries of the Union. The directive, explains the Council, is limited to establishing procedures to ensure the adequacy of minimum wages where they exist, to promote collective bargaining to set wages and to increase effective access to minimum wage protection for workers who have them. law under national law. EU member states that have minimum wages in place will have to establish a procedural framework for setting and updating minimum wages according to a number of criteria. Council and Parliament have agreed that updates of the minimum wage must take place at least once every two years, or at the latest every four years for countries that use an automatic indexation mechanism. The social partners must be involved in the procedures for setting and updating minimum wages.The directive also aims to promote collective bargaining as a means of defending wages: the co-legislators have decided to promote the capacity of the social partners to engage in collective bargaining, while protecting employee representatives. In particular, it is envisaged that, in countries where collective bargaining covers less than 80% of the labor market, member states prepare operational plans to promote it, with timelines and measures to increase the coverage of collective agreements. Finally, the Council and Parliament agreed on measures aimed at improving workers’ effective access to the protection of the minimum wage: checks by the Labor Inspectorates, accessible information on the minimum wage, developing the capacity of the authorities to prosecute employers who do not respect the rules. The agreement reached tonight in Strasbourg in the trilogue, after eight rounds of negotiations, will have to be confirmed by Coreper, the committee of permanent representatives of the member states to the EU, after which it will have to be formally voted on both in the Council and in Parliament. Finally, the directive will have to be transposed into national law within two years.