Governments will no longer be able to invoke the lack of EU competence in negotiations on the draft EU Directive on adequate minimum wages. Planet Labor has obtained the decision handed down by the EU Council Legal Service from 09 March that validates the legal basis used by the EU Commission in its legislative proposal (c.f. article No. 12199). According to its opinion, as long as the initiative does not set either the level of the minimum wage nor its calculation basis, then there is no violation of the TFEU and Article 152 (TFEU), which recognizes ‘the diversity of national systems’ and ‘the autonomy’ of the Member States in matters of social policy.
For the Legal Service, the proposal is merely looking ‘to improve the adequacy and the coverage of minimum wages in the Member States by establishing a framework for such improvement, and to enhance access to adequate minimum wages.’ Although Article 153 of the TFEU, in setting ‘the improvement of working conditions’ in the EU as one of its objectives, does exclude pay from its scope, the Court of Justice has recognized certain ‘exceptions’ in its jurisprudence, and without which it considers the objectives of Article 153 of the Treaty ‘would be deprived of most of their substance.’
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