Proposal for a Directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union: a look at French law

Abstract

On October 28, 2020, the European Commission published a Proposal for Directive 2020/0310 on adequate minimum wages in the European Union. The project was expected and the result is both ambitious and modest. Ambitious because the Commission calls for the determination of criteria to define an “adequate minimum wage” or “decency threshold”: reality of purchasing power, general level of wages and their distribution, average wage increases, labour productivity. To achieve this result, the project intends to promote the action of the social partners ant the lever or collective bargaining. But the project is also modest because the difficulty lies in avoiding the opposition of Member States that would result from their legal competence in determining wages and representing workers in collective bargaining. The drafting of the proposal is both cautious and often not very restrictive. The impact on French law will undoubtedly be relative, as the French tradition of collective bargaining on the minimum wage seems both well anchored in the national landscape and more demanding than the elements delivered by the proposal. France, however, was arguably not the core target of the minimum wage proposal.