On 5 March 2025, the European Commission and the European cross-industry social partners have concluded a Pact for Social Dialogue in which they take joint initiatives to strengthen social dialogue at EU level.
The Pact follows the January 2024 Val Duchesse Summit and its Social Partner Declaration in which the signing of a pact was announced (see here). The Pact is a rather short document of barely 5 pages that, according to the text "aims to create the conditions for European social partners to shape labour markets, employment and social policies in a way that supports the management of change, delivers a fair, sustainable and resilient economy and provides quality jobs". In reality, with the pact the von der Leyen Commission wish to show that it takes the European partners seriously, after decades of quasi-neglect. Therefore, the pact foresees new competences and instruments for the social partners:
In particular, the Commission will:
- appoint a European Social Dialogue Envoy, who will promote timely and meaningful consultations of social partners and channel concerns about social dialogue at national level to the EU institutions, hereby improving awareness of social dialogue within the Commission
- work together with social partners on a Quality Jobs Roadmap to be delivered in 2025.
- exchange with social partners on their priorities regarding the Commission's Work Programme for the following year, ahead of its adoption.
- create a mechanism to receive joint reports from the social partners on social dialogue at EU level.
- consult social partners also on policy initiatives that do not fall under the scope of article 153 and 154 TFEU but are of particular relevance for social partners.
Next, the social partners will periodically develop a multi-annual work programme aimed at addressing the principal economic and social challenges confronting European labour markets. This programme will also identify the most suitable instruments to respond to these challenges. In addition, the social partners will establish joint procedures to strengthen their autonomous bipartite social dialogue — including the negotiation of social partner agreements — and collaborate on the various forms of social dialogue tools employed at the EU level.
Certainly, these initiatives offer the European social partners more formal influence on the wider social policy (and definitely more documents for the Commission to process). But it remains to be seen whether it will really change the lack of effective collective bargaining at EU level, which is still one of the main concerns. As the Pact states itself, it is a process, not an end result.
Source: EU Commission website press release + text of the Pact
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