2025: A decisive year for Social Europe

2025 will be decisive year for Social Europe. To «cut red tape», the new Commission just presented a draft «Omnibus» directive that cancels most social due diligence obligations for corporations, which the EU Parliament and Council enacted only last year. We also discuss a forthcoming court case (C-19/23), which may shape Social Europe for years to come. In January, Advocate General Emiliou asked the EU Court of Justice to annul the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive, which the EU Parliament and Council enacted only in 2022. If his opinion prevails, the popular legitimacy of the EU will be in tatters. Workers will not understand why the business-friendly governance interventions of EU executives on wage cuts and the deregulation of collective bargaining issued after the 2008 crisis are legal, while a social directive, that had been adopted by the EU’s democratic legislators to promote adequate minimum wages and collective bargaining, is not.