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The idea behind the Rift is simple: for each topic of debate, we provide you with an expertise based on a pro-con approach, written by competent and legitimate experts. We want to help you make your own opinion, and guide you on first steps to civic engagement.FOR
FOR a rise of European minimum wages!
Thiébaut Weber
Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
Minimum wages protect workers from poverty when they stop the process of leveling down the wages and guarantee their decent level.
Even though the minimum wage is a widespread instrument among the 22 Member States of the European Union, their level is still too low in most of the countries. An information note published by the ETUC shows that minimum wages are so inferior to the official threshold, that many European citizens must struggle to make ends meet.
In 10 European countries the minimum wage is located at 50% or more below the national median wage level. This obviously makes it difficult to make a decent living with the money earned by workers.
Time has come to take strong measures for minimum wages through a larger policy
Minimum wages serve only if they protect workers from poverty. The fight against unfair competition is a European challenge, and more efforts should be put in order to fight against social dumping. We need to address the root causes of social dumping by modifying the gaps between minimum wages in European countries.
The time has come to take strong measures for minimum wages through a larger policy which would support a relaunch of a social convergence in Europe. A common strategy on minimum wages must reach towards the objective of applying two principles: the one of equal pay for equal work and the fight against inequalities.
Collective bargaining is essential in order to “complete” minimum wages
Since last year, the ETUC has committed to promote an increase of wages in Europe through a stronger general trade union policy and a stronger support for collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is essential in order to “complete” minimum wages and to guarantee salary scales, ensuring a fair distribution of added value everywhere in Europe, as well as regular salary progression for workers.
The priority of the ETUC’s campaign for wages’ increase is first to fight against poverty and inequalities.
The first priority target of the ETUC’s campaign for wages increase is to fight against poverty and inequalities. The second target is to relaunch salaries’ convergence between Western and Eastern Europe, the North and the South, and between men and women, in order to eliminate all kinds of discrimination.
AGAINST
European minimum wage: a federalist pipe dream
Nicolas Bay
Vice-president of National Rally (political party), Member of the European Parliament, Co-chair of the group Europe of Nations and Freedom, Chair of the group National Rally in Regional Council of Normandy
The supporters of European federalism, in particular the “leftists”, have been advocating for over two decades for an introduction of a European minimum wage. According to them, it would help to effectively fight against inequalities, by introducing a legal threshold imposing a minimum level of salaries.
To advocate for this idea is to forget that unfair competition does not only depend on wage policy as on “adjustment variable” between the different countries of the EU. If we follow this logic, we would need to introduce uniform employer and employee contributions, as well as fiscal charges on salaries, in order to have a coherent action… Harmonising gross wages would have no effectiveness without taking a look into the net wage.
Unfair competition does not only depend on wage policy
We hence observe that this headlong rush relies more on a federalist utopia than on a serious evaluation of economic realities of each European nation.
The gaps between the EU Member States are indeed very important: the lowest minimum wage is in Bulgaria with 184 euros, the highest in Luxembourg at 1 921 euros. France is on the 4th place with 1 458 euros per month !
Introducing a minimum wage at the European level would in particular increase wages in Central and Eastern Europe, and drastically decrease those in countries like France, hit by a following leveling-down.
The will of introducing an European minimum wage would not resolve at all the problem of unfair competition. It represents the conception of an even more autocratic Europe trying to end with nation’s specificities in the name of globalism.
Each country of the EU must be free to introduce it’s own level of minimum wage
At the time when most of the European nations are facing big budgeting challenges, we are struggling to imagine how the Member States would accept to comply with inadequate and impossible measures, implemented by a disconnected and profoundly rejected European Commission.
Each country of the EU must be free to introduce it’s own level of minimum wage, depending on it’s level of development and on the sovereignty of the decision! This is the whole purpose of the project: a Europe which would let our nations breathe and which would respect their fundamental liberties.
