This report presents the key results of a unique study on the state of collective bargaining development in the Central and Eastern European region.
The background to this initiative is Directive 2022/2041/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2002 on Adequate Minimum Wages in the EU, which for the first time in the history of European integration, provides guidelines, in Article 4, for the promotion of collective bargaining by EU Member States. The CEE post-communist countries, that became members of the EU as a result of the 2004/2007 enlargement, as well as Serbia, which has candidate status, were included in the research.
This comparative report briefly discusses the factors affecting the possibility of promoting collective bargaining in light of the requirements of Article 4 of the AMW Directive. It is based on 12 national reports encompassing the following counties: Bulgaria, Czechia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. As a result of this comparative exercise, the conditions for strengthening collective bargaining systems in the region will be discussed and outlined, together with appropriate recommendations.
This report was published under the project CEE CAW ‘Challenges for Organising and Collective Bargaining in Care, Administration and Waste collection sectors in Central and Eastern European Countries’, which was led by the Institute of Public Affairs (Warsaw). The other partners were the: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia), Central European Labour Studies Institute (Bratislava), Lithuanian Centre of Social Sciences (Vilnius), Centre for Democracy Foundation (Belgrade) and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (Brussels).
