Tilskipun ESB um útsenda starfsmenn (96/71/EB, endurskoðuð 2018/957) hefur verið innleidd í íslenskan rétt í gegnum EES-samninginn. Útsendir starfsmenn á Íslandi eru tiltölulega fáir — áætlaðir 2.000–3.000 á ári, aðallega í byggingariðnaði og sérhæfðum iðnaðarverkefnum.

Ísland er með hæstu félagsmönnun í OECD, um 90%, langt umfram öll ESB-ríki (Danmörk 67%, Svíþjóð 65%, meðaltal ESB-27 um 23%). Þetta háa hlutfall helst vegna almennrar útvíkkunar kjarasamninga þar sem samningar sem samtökin semja gilda um alla starfsmenn í viðkomandi geira.

Directive (EU) 2022/2041 on adequate minimum wages in the European Union (entered into force 14 November 2022, transposition deadline 15 November 2024) sets a framework for adequate statutory minimum wages and the promotion of collective bargaining on wage setting. Crucially, Article 4 explicitly preserves national collective-bargaining systems: Member States with collective-bargaining coverage below 80% must establish a national action plan to increase coverage, but Member States that do not have a statutory minimum wage (Austria, Italy, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Sweden) are not required to introduce one. Recital 19 and Article 1(4) explicitly state the Directive does not oblige Member States to establish a statutory minimum wage where wages are exclusively set via collective agreements, and does not affect the freedom to determine wages by collective agreements. Denmark challenged the Directive at the CJEU (Case C-19/23) on competence grounds. The CJEU ruling (delivered 19 November 2025) largely upheld the Directive but struck down Article 5 provisions on binding statutory criteria for setting minimum wage levels, on the grounds that they touched on 'pay' under Article 153(5) TFEU which excludes EU competence over pay determination. The Nordic collective-bargaining model thus remains protected by both the Directive's text and the CJEU's interpretation.

On 1 June 2017, Sweden repealed key restrictive provisions of the 'lex Laval' legislation that had been enacted in 2010 in response to the CJEU's Laval ruling (LABOUR-LEGAL-001). The 2017 reform deleted the so-called 'rule of proof' (bevisregeln), which had required that industrial action against an employer be considered unjustifiable if the employer could prove that the conditions workers were striking over were equivalent to those in the relevant Swedish collective agreement. Under the new rules, Swedish trade unions can again take industrial action to compel foreign service providers to sign Swedish collective agreements for their posted workers, even if the foreign employer can demonstrate equivalent terms in a foreign agreement. The reform was enacted under the Swedish Social Democrat–Green coalition government and was supported by the Swedish trade union movement (LO, TCO, Saco). The European Commission did not initiate infringement proceedings against the 2017 reform, suggesting that the post-Lisbon legal framework — including Article 28 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (right to collective action), the revised Posted Workers Directive (2018/957), and ongoing CJEU jurisprudence — provides space for Member States to protect collective-bargaining systems within EU law.