← Til baka á Heimildir
LABOUR-LEGAL-002 Lagalegur texti Há
Vinnumarkaður Lögfræðilegt
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.
Síðast staðfest 28. apríl 2026
Svið Lögfræðilegt
Heimildaflokkur Lagalegur texti

Heimild

EUR-Lex — Directive (EU) 2022/2041

Skoða heimild ↗

Fyrirvarar

The Directive's Nordic carve-out is a key data point in debates about whether EU accession would require dismantling Iceland's collective-bargaining model. Caveats: (1) the Directive is not (yet, as of April 2026) incorporated into the EEA Agreement, so Iceland is not bound; (2) the 2025 CJEU ruling shows the boundary between EU competence and national pay-setting is judicially contested; (3) high-coverage countries (Iceland's union density is ~90%, well above the 80% threshold) face no Article 4 action plan obligation; (4) some critics argue the Directive's promotion of statutory minimum wages where coverage is low still creates indirect pressure on collective-bargaining systems over time.

Tengdar heimildir (3)

LABOUR-DATA-005 Vinnumarkaður

Félagsmönnun á íslenskum vinnumarkaði er um 90% (meðaltal ESB er ~23%) og laun ákvarðast fyrst og fremst í miðlægum kjarasamningum milli ASÍ og SA fremur en með löggjöf. Engin lögbundin lágmarkslaun eru til staðar — kjarasamningsákvæði gegna því hlutverki. ESB-aðild gæti bætt við ramma um starfsmannaráð og samákvörðunarrétt.

 LABOUR-DATA-013 Vinnumarkaður

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.

 LABOUR-LEGAL-001 Vinnumarkaður

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Grand Chamber ruling in Case C-341/05 Laval un Partneri Ltd v Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet (18 December 2007) addressed the tension between national collective-action rights and EU free movement of services. The Latvian company Laval posted workers to Sweden for a school construction project and signed a Latvian collective agreement at lower rates; Swedish unions blockaded the site after Laval refused to sign a Swedish agreement. The CJEU held that (1) collective action against social dumping can in principle be a legitimate restriction on free movement of services as an overriding reason of public interest, but (2) the Swedish system of case-by-case wage negotiation exceeded what is permitted under the Posted Workers Directive (96/71/EC) because minimum rates of pay must be set through one of the means listed in Article 3 of the Directive (statutory law or universally applicable collective agreement). The proportionality test in the ruling effectively limited the scope of collective action against foreign service providers. The judgment forced Sweden to amend its laws (the so-called 'lex Laval', enacted 2010), restricting unions' ability to take industrial action against employers whose posted workers were already covered by a collective agreement — even an inferior foreign one.

Notuð í greiningum (1)

Í Evrópusambandinu eru réttindi verkafólks á forsendum markaðarins Vísir

  • Að hluta staðfest Styður Maastricht-samningurinn setur skorður á möguleika á kjarabótum innan aðildarríkja ESB.