Industrial relations
Trade unions, employer organisations and public authorities all play a role in the governance of the employment relationship. They are interlocking parts in a system that operates at European, national, sectoral, regional and company level. In recent years, as technology and forms of work evolve within a constantly changing economic environment, industrial relations systems have faced critical challenges.
Find the latest content on this topic below.
Minimum wages in 2026: Annual review
Minimum wage setting across the EU has become an increasingly dynamic and closely watched policy area, shaped by the transposition of the EU Minimum Wage Directive and a decade of sustained real-terms growth in statutory rates. This report examines the wage-setting discussions that took place across Member States and Norway in 2025, focusing on the countries with and without a national minimum wage, the interplay between minimum wages and collective bargaining in low-paid sectors, and the growing role of indicative reference values in shaping national decisions.Involvement of employer organisations and trade unions in the European Semester in 2024–2025
This report examines the role of trade unions and employers’ organisations in shaping the medium-term fiscal structural plans and the 2025 annual progress reports. It analyses social partners’ involvement at national level with governments, as well as their engagement with the European Commission in fact-finding missions, country reports and country-specific recommendations, and assesses their participation in the broader European semester, including the new social convergence framework.National minimum wages in the EU: policy-driven growth, continued convergence and increased proximity to negotiated wages
Over the past year, national minimum wages continued to rise substantially across the EU, especially in central and eastern European countries, continuing the narrowing of regional disparities. The EU Minimum Wage Directive has emerged as a significant driver of minimum wage hikes in many countries, exceeding inflation levels and increasing faster than collectively agreed wage floors in many low-paid sectors.Over 40 years, Eurofound has developed as a key centre of expertise for monitoring and analysing trends in industrial relations. This includes linkages between European and national-level social dialogue. Drawing on the knowledge of its Network of Eurofound Correspondents in the EU Member States and Norway, it has captured developments in all Member States and in the EU as a whole.
Eurofound has produced a range of comparative analyses, articles and case studies across the EU and Norway in the area of industrial relations, as well as regularly updated databases on related topics.
Research maps and discusses key dimensions and indicators relevant to industrial relations systems in Europe in the 21st century. Another thread of research looks at how social partners in the EU and Norway have explored new topics, tools and innovative approaches to respond to the many new political, legal and social challenges that have arisen in recent years.
Pay and working time continue to be areas of high interest and are reviewed annually. One strand of the recent pay update focuses on statutory minimum wage levels across the EU while another focuses on collective wage bargaining.
Since 2006, Eurofound has been carrying out studies on the representativeness of European sectoral social partner organisations, as mandated by the European Commission. These studies are designed to provide the basic information needed for the setting up and functioning of the European sectoral social dialogue committees.
In this context, the European Commission in 2015 launched a ‘new start’ for European social dialogue. In a joint statement in June 2016, the Commission, Council of the European Union and social partners underlined its fundamental role as a significant component of EU employment and social policymaking.
In September 2023, Commission President von der Leyen announced a social partner summit with European social partners in Val Duchesse in 2024 to address labour and skills shortages, echoing the summit on social dialogue at the same location almost 40 years ago. In March 2025, the Commission and the cross-industry social partners signed a joint Pact on strengthening European social dialogue. This builds on the 2024 Val Duchesse Social Partner Declaration.
This is a selection of the most important outputs for this topic.
24 October 2023
Working time in 2021–2022
The most important changes in the regulation of working time in Europe in 2021 and 2022 were related to the transposition of two European directives: the Work–life Balance Directive and the Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive. The reduction of working time and more specifically the four-day working week have been increasingly debated in many EU Member States. In 2022, the average collectively agreed working week in the EU stood at 38.1 hours. Of the sectors analysed, agreed working hours were shortest in public administration, at around 37.7 hours – still longer than the overall average – and longest in the retail sector, at 38.5 hours. The average collectively agreed paid annual leave entitlement stood at 24.3 days in the EU, and was higher in the Member States that were part of the EU prior to its 2004 enlargement (EU14), at 25.3 days, than in the other Member States, at only 20.9 days. If working collectively agreed hours, full-time workers in the EU27 would have worked, on average, 1,726 hours in 2022, with an average of 1,698 hours in the EU14 and 1,822 hours in the other Member States.
29 June 2023
Minimum wages in 2023: Annual review
The 2023 annual review of minimum wages was prepared in the context of unprecedented inflation across Europe. While this led to hefty increases in nominal wage rates in many countries, it was in many cases not enough to maintain workers’ purchasing power. Based on developments over the last decade, this report shows that, overall, minimum wage earners in nearly all countries saw their purchasing power rising, the gap between their wages and average wages narrowing, and to some degree growth exceeding labour productivity development. Despite the short-term losses in real terms, these longer-term gains did not disappear in 2023. Even in the context of rising inflation, the processes of wage setting did not change substantially. But the early impacts of the EU directive on adequate minimum wages are noticeable, with more countries electing to use the international ‘indicative reference values’ mentioned in the directive – 50% of the average or 60% of the median wage – when determining their targets for new levels. This year’s report presents, for the first time, an in-depth insight into net minimum wages for single adults, through the EUROMOD tax–benefit microsimulation model, while presenting the latest research findings on minimum wages, published during 2022.
30 August 2022
Moving with the times: Emerging practices and provisions in collective bargaining
This report analyses recent developments and emerging practices in collective bargaining processes and outcomes, mainly in the private sector. The report covers collective bargaining systems in 10 EU Member States and is based on cases identified through interviews with key stakeholders and negotiating parties at national level. It analyses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic and social crisis on collective bargaining dynamics and collective agreements. It also investigates practices and innovations that have emerged in response to structural drivers such as technological change, decarbonisation and climate-neutrality policies, and workforce ageing. It assesses the capacity of collective bargaining systems to adapt to structural changes in work, production and the labour market as well as medium-term trends.
10 December 2021
Social partners going digital: Using digital tools and adapting social dialogue processes
Digital transformation is changing the world of work. This report looks at how social partners – the actors involved in the regulation of employment relationships – are increasingly adopting technological solutions to improve the services that they provide to their members and facilitate collective bargaining processes. Technological tools offer social partners the opportunity to enhance consultation, engage with their members through digitised processes, improve services and increase networking activities, as well as addressing the issue of membership decline. The findings of this report show that the extent to which the social partners use digital technologies varies greatly across the EU Member States, Norway and the United Kingdom. Provisions in collective agreements on several aspects of digitalisation have been identified in about half of the countries. Through these provisions, social partners encourage their members to boost training on digital skills, ensure fair and safe working conditions and take account of data protection and employee monitoring practices. The European social partners’ autonomous framework agreement on digitalisation has provided inspiration to national-level organisations, and follow-up actions in this regard have the potential to greatly benefit their members.
11 December 2020
Industrial relations: Developments 2015–2019
As part of its mandate to promote dialogue between management and labour, Eurofound has monitored and analysed developments in industrial relations systems at EU level and in EU Member States for over 40 years. This flagship report is based on the work done in this context during the last programming period (2015–2019). It draws on the extensive monitoring of industrial relations systems and social dialogue carried out by Eurofound on an ongoing basis. The overall aim of the report is to assist policymakers and industrial relations actors both to understand the challenges facing social dialogue and to identify possible ways to contribute to balanced and well-functioning industrial relations systems going forward.
10 September 2020
Capacity building for effective social dialogue in the European Union
The aim of this report is to add to the discussion on how Eurofound can contribute to supporting capacity building of social partners for effective social dialogue. The report includes a review by Eurofound aimed at identifying the capacity-building needs and initiatives of social partners in relation to national frameworks for autonomous collective bargaining, involvement in European social dialogue and the European Semester, and the development of membership and services for members. It also includes the results from stakeholder consultations and two exchange seminars held in 2019, along with a set of policy pointers for further discussion.
Researchers at Eurofound provide expert insights and can be contacted for questions or media requests.
Victoria Cojocariu
Research officerVictoria Cojocariu is a research officer working on social dialogue and industrial relations, and contributing to projects investigating digitalisation, work organisation and workplace practices. She is extensively involved in the representativeness studies Eurofound conducts to support European social dialogue, as well as other studies analysing collective bargaining practices and the role of social partners at national and European level. From 2025, Victoria manages the EU PolicyWatch database. Prior to joining Eurofound in 2019, Victoria was a researcher for the Centre for Public Innovation in Bucharest and for the Open Society Foundation Romania, contributing to national and international research projects in the field of migration, education, access to the labour market of third-country nationals, as well as human rights. She holds BA and MA degrees in Sociology.
Mária Sedláková
Research officerMária Sedláková is a research officer in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. She is responsible for drafting overview reports for sectoral representativeness studies, management and quality control of national reporting on industrial relations, social dialogue and working life, and development of a project on collective bargaining beyond pay. Before joining Eurofound, she worked as a technical research officer within the Governance and Tripartism Department at the International Labour Organization in Geneva on the Social Dialogue Flagship Report 2022. She also worked as a researcher at the Central European Labour Studies Institute in Bratislava (2013–2020), focusing on social dialogue, collective bargaining, working conditions and sociology of work. Maria holds an MA in Political Science with specialisation in Comparative European Politics from Central European University.
This section provides access to all content that has been published on the topic.
