European Justice abolishes the Directive’s mandatory standards for setting minimum wages

Thus, the ruling is settled Appeal filed by Denmark – Sweden supported it – against the directive, considering that the rule represents “direct interference” in exclusive national powers, such as determining wages and the right to associate and form unions.

European Supreme Court In his ruling, he supports the validity of most of the directives, But it eliminates by understanding that there is an interference with points 2 and 3 of Article 5 of the legislation, leaving in practice the procedure designed by the Directive to determine the appropriate statutory minimum wage without a framework.

Although The directive does not provide specific numbers or thresholds in its now-repealed mandatory criteria.stipulates that Member States must take into account “at least” the purchasing power of the legal minimum wage, taking into account the cost of living; The general amount of salaries and their distribution; Wage growth rate. And the levels and development of national productivity in the long term.

In addition to overturning this list of criteria, the Luxembourg-based court also ruled Removes reference to countries being able to use the Automatic Indexing Adjustment Mechanism The legal minimum wage, based on appropriate criteria and in accordance with national laws and customs, “provided that the application of this mechanism does not lead to a decrease in the legal minimum wage.”

currently, 22 out of 27 countries have a national minimum wage, and only Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria and Finland apply such a framework.. According to July data from the European statistics agency Eurostat, the monthly minimum wage varies widely between countries in the bloc, from 551 euros in Bulgaria to 2,704 euros in Luxembourg. In the case of Spain, the national minimum wage in twelve installments is 1,381 euros, which places the country in the middle of the European table.