Perspective. The mirage of Europeanising industrial relations. What possibilities for East-West trade union cooperation?

Abstract

This article outlines possibilities for deepening relationships between trade unions from the so-called old EU Member States and those from Central and Eastern Europe. We set out the possibilities for what we describe as enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation. By this we mean multilateral rather than bilateral cooperation that is deep enough to include the joint definition of goals and strategies, and willingness to build a transnational dimension to industrial relations, including, ultimately, conducting collective bargaining on some topics. A critical analysis of the so-called Europeanisation of industrial relations is the background to our discussion. We find the participation of trade unions in this process to be limited to responses to external impulses which results in the degree of enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation in areas of core trade union activity being low. We present the thesis that in-depth cooperation may be possible in relation to new challenges for the world of work, where the transnational dimension is of key importance and where trade unions are less bound by their own national traditions and industrial relations practices.

Introductory remarks

The European Union is not static but rather a project ‘in the making’. Economic integration perhaps inevitably entails adjustments in the social dimension. This process is markedly asymmetrical, however, to the detriment of the latter (Scharpf, 1996, 2010). Although the social aspect of integration has come more to the fore in recent years, as demonstrated by the European Pillar of Social Rights or the Adequate Minimum Wage Directive, it is still insufficient. The continued deepening of the Single Market and the existence of the common currency mean that European trade unions need to find ways to deepen transnational cooperation if they want to represent their members’ interests effectively (Bieler and Schulten, 2008; Crouch, 2000; Dølvik, 2000; Glassner and Pochet, 2011; Sisson et al., 1999). Whether such cooperation exists in reality has to date been the subject of an ambiguous assessment by researchers (Furåker and Larsson, 2020; Kiess and Seeliger, 2020; Seeliger, 2019). However, ‘Europeanisation’, to the extent that it has happened at all, has been limited primarily to the impulses from the EU level that affect national systems, not the existence of a truly European level of industrial relations based on collective bargaining schemes.

Secondly, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004–2007 was a major challenge for the European trade union movement. The inclusion of organisations from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – characterised by limited organisational capacity and rapidly declining collective bargaining coverage – in the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and European Trade Union Federations (ETUFs) put the possibility of developing transnational trade union cooperation in a new light. Already in the pre-enlargement period researchers had pointed out that CEE countries did not meet the standards of the European Social Model regarding industrial relations (Mailand and Due, 2004; Meardi, 2002; Vaughan-Whitehead, 2003). Interestingly, the EU enlargement of 2004–2007 coincided with a sudden disappearance of the term ‘European collective bargaining’ from the trade union debate.

In this article, we would like to contribute to the – indispensable, in our view – debate on how to ensure true transnational solidarity of EU trade unions in the form of permanent structured cooperation, seeking consensus and building joint strategies on issues important to employees, even if this might seem to undermine national collective interests. We will call it ‘enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation’ (EMTC). By this we mean multilateral rather than bilateral cooperation that is sufficiently deep to include the joint definition of objectives and strategies, and willingness to build a transnational dimension to industrial relations, including, ultimately, collective bargaining. The complicated relations between organisations from ‘new’ and ‘old’ EU Member States will constitute the background for these considerations.

Given trade unions’ traditional attachment to their own (local or national) mechanisms for dialogue with employers on core labour issues, we propose to focus on seeking transnational solidarity to challenges that are relatively new to all trade union organisations in the EU. On this basis their starting positions would be similar, unencumbered by inherited traditions, achievements and customs. The challenges of adapting to climate, technological and migration change will shake the European world of work, regardless of the current level of locally or nationally rooted resilience. We believe that this may persuade trade unions to work out joint solutions.

The mirage of ‘Europeanisation’ of industrial relations

Some kind of uniform framework is needed to develop enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation in the EU, which would be permanent, not ad hoc.

With regard to legislative instruments, such frameworks are provided by the Treaty-based European Social Dialogue (ESD) mechanism and by the European Works Council (EWC) institution, which indirectly offers trade unions the potential for transnational cooperation. A framework established on a voluntary basis by trade unions is the mechanism for coordinating collective bargaining proposed at the 1999 ETUC Congress. The emergence of this kind of cooperation platform has enabled researchers to formulate the thesis of a so-called Europeanisation of industrial relations, namely the transfer to the EU level of certain activities traditionally pursued by workers’ representation at the national level. In this respect Europeanisation is a very broad concept that, despite numerous attempts at comprehensive analysis, has not been clearly defined (see for example, Biagi et al., 2002; Eberwein et al., 2018). Perhaps the phenomenon can best be described for the time being as any endeavour to instigate transnational relations between social partners at different levels within the EU.

A first example is the European Social Dialogue, introduced in 1992 and anchored in the Treaty in 1997 (Welz, 2008). Its emergence should, in our view, be clearly linked to the creation of the Single Market. The political instigators of this concept were aware of the social repercussions accompanying the introduction of the four freedoms. What was needed therefore was a strategy that would win the favour of the trade unions, so that they would become participants in the process rather than inhibitors (Bieling, 2001; Hyman, 2005). This innovative mechanism was met with high expectations, even to the extent of creating a corporatist model at the EU level (Falkner, 1998; Jensen et al., 1999). The mechanism worked well as long as the European Commission was active in proposing ‘social’ legislation. As a result, agreements were transformed into directives on parental leave, fixed-term contracts and part-time work. In 2001, the European social partners declared that they wanted more autonomy. In practice, this meant that, from then on, the agreements they concluded would be implemented independently by affiliates in the Member States. This worked positively once – in the case of the telework agreement, which had a concrete positive impact on the situation in the Member States, as national standards were rare at that time.

Later negotiations of this kind brought much less positive results. The cross-industry agreements reached became less and less substantive and it was not very clear what their national implementation was supposed to include. In 2010, for the first time, the European social partners themselves chose a topic for negotiation: inclusive labour markets. The results were feeble, however, as the negotiated text was mostly a broad-brush description of the challenges and contained only fairly vague non-binding recommendations. This was severely criticised by NSZZ Solidarność. Similar shortcomings were contained in subsequent agreements concluded under the autonomous formula, which were rather declarations of intent. Additionally, the social partners from CEE countries did not have sufficient capacity to implement such agreements effectively.

Based on the illustrations presented so far, the ESD mechanism, especially at the cross-sectoral level, is in a clear and deep crisis in terms of achieving results that would be perceived by the trade union base as having any impact at the workplace (Degryse, 2011; Tricart, 2019). A survey conducted by the ARTUS CEE project (Czarzasty, 2020) showed that most rank-and-file trade unionists in Central and Eastern Europe are unaware even of the ESD’s existence, let alone any tangible results on their working conditions. We have the impression that this does not apply only to CEE countries. In our view, it cannot be said that the ESD mechanism in its current ritualised form contributes much to the Europeanisation of industrial relations.

Let us look at another mechanism guaranteed by EU law, namely social dialogue (and more broadly, democracy in the workplace) in multinational corporations (MNCs), seen through the prism of EWCs (De Spiegelaere et al., 2022). Certainly, from its introduction in 1994 trade unions had high hopes for the information and consultation mechanism at the EU level, expecting EWCs to become a counterweight to cross-border corporate strategies affecting workers (Lecher et al., 1999). Over the years, however, it has become increasingly apparent that EWCs’ right to consultation on decisions made by MNC boards is often ignored, and there are no effective sanctions to counter this practice. In order to change this, the European trade union movement has been active in trying to improve the original EWC Directive (which was adopted only in 2009) and is now campaigning intensively for its fundamental strengthening. But have trade unions been able to use the EWC institution effectively to create platforms for EMTC against the boards of MNCs? Probably not. Most ETUFs have developed rules to influence EWCs operating in their sectors. The situation is worse for national organisations, many of which have not developed a proper EWC strategy (Hann, 2010). The problems go beyond cultural or language barriers, to include the diversity of national industrial relations (Huzzard and Docherty, 2005; Whittall, 2000). Moreover, it has been difficult for trade unions to create solidarity-based cooperation mechanisms through EWCs in highly competitive (export-oriented) sectors, when there are threats of cross-border relocation of production or efforts by local subsidiary managements to attract new intra-company corporate investments (Banyuls et al., 2008; Pernicka et al., 2017). Examples from the financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009 show that trade unions generally struggled to use EWCs to build cross-border solidarity in crisis situations, even where effective networks already existed (Mählmeyer et al., 2017). Only a few unionised EWCs seem to have become indirect platforms for cross-border trade union cooperation. On the other hand, multinational corporations, initially highly critical of EWCs, seem increasingly to be willing to use these bodies for their own purposes, namely cross-border personnel management (Pulignano and Waddington, 2020). It seems that in some cases EWCs are not perceived as ‘union-safe’ bodies. A survey conducted by Belgian trade unionists shows that EWCs can be seen as a threat because they may ‘lead to a harmonisation of wages in the company, meaning that the Belgians would see their salaries decrease’ (Olijslagers and De Spiegelaere, 2019). Of course, EWCs are far from dealing with wage issues, corporate boards would not allow it. Rather this example illustrates the fears of ordinary trade unionists.

Arguably, this is one of the important factors in trade union ambivalence towards the development of transnational company agreements (TCAs), concluded in multinational corporations with employee representation. EWCs are a convenient platform for such negotiations in most cases. Trade unions, however, are very keen to maintain the principle of their exclusive competence in collective bargaining. Therefore, although initially caught off guard by the development of TCAs, they quickly began to develop an appropriate strategy to deal with them. The ETUC declared in 2006 that the ETUFs and local/national unions should negotiate and ‘manage’ transnational agreements negotiated with central management and called on the ETUFs to develop their own, more detailed procedures and recommendations for negotiation processes (Müller et al., 2010). Initially, an optional legal framework was mooted for such agreements at the EU level. This proved unacceptable to the Nordic trade unions, however, who suspected that it might be a step towards undermining their national collective bargaining autonomy from above. To avoid internal strife, this topic practically disappeared from the ETUC agenda. As a result, the topic of TCAs, which might have helped to develop solidarity-based trade union cooperation within the same MNC, was de facto ‘gifted’ to the initiative of corporate management. It seems that Waddington’s (2011) bitter assessment that the importance of EWCs for industrial relations is symbolic rather than actual still remains valid.

Finally, let us examine cross-border coordination of collective bargaining. This is truly an independent trade union initiative that has developed since the 1970s, initially in the metal industry (Traxler and Brandl, 2009; Traxler et al., 2008). It became extremely important with the introduction of the common EU currency, as a result of which collective bargaining systems in the euro countries came under pressure from mutual competition at virtually all levels, once devaluation, which for years had served to mitigate macroeconomic shocks, was no longer available (Sadowski et al., 2003; Schulten, 1998; Janssen, 2011). It must be acknowledged that the ETUC (1999) attempted at its 1999 Helsinki Congress, almost immediately after the introduction of the euro, to create and promote transnational mechanisms for coordinating collective bargaining, pointing out that its role is ‘to stimulate coordination in order to guarantee the overall coherence of the demands of the European trade union movement’. Because of the institutional heterogeneity of industrial relations systems, however, attempts at coordination have failed time and again (Höpner and Seeliger, 2021). Researchers point to Germany as an example of excessive wage moderation with trade union consent (Galazka and Prosser, 2021; Janssen, 2009: 136). This approach has made it difficult to build real cross-border cooperation between trade unions in the area of wages (Traxler and Mermet, 2003). The experience of the fiscal crisis in 2008–2010 showed that there were few instances of cross-border coordination of wage negotiations on austerity policies. One positive achievement was the adoption of the wage coordination principle by industriAll Europe (in 2012). It is significant that the most recent ETUC document on this issue was adopted in 2018. It only indicates in general terms the need to develop better cross-border coordination of collective bargaining and wage policies, while respecting the autonomy of national social partners (ETUC, 2018). In the Berlin Manifesto of the 2023 ETUC Congress, the term ‘cross-border coordination of collective bargaining’ does not appear at all, which seems quite bizarre when at the same time it is announced that the ETUC will advocate for a strong European industrial policy (ETUC, 2023a), which, logically speaking, would require the development of appropriate European mechanisms for a response from the side of labour. The Action Programme adopted at the Congress states, very vaguely, that the ETUC will provide a forum for discussing the coordination on current collective bargaining initiatives which could include inter alia an accelerated upward convergence of wages. However, it is not indicated what such a ‘discussion’ would lead to, while at the same time it stresses that this must fully respect the understanding that collective agreements are a national competence (ETUC, 2023b).

Although the resolution adopted at the ETUC Congress in Helsinki in 1999 was proudly titled ‘Towards a European system of Industrial Relations’, in our view, in none of the above areas has Europeanisation of industrial relations advanced so far that it might result in the development of enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation. Different national organisations have used the mechanisms discussed above mainly to pursue their own domestic or local interests.

It is also worth mentioning that the idea presented by the ETUC in 1999 regarding mutual cross-border recognition of membership by trade unions affiliated to this confederation has still not been transformed into a concrete roadmap. Yet organising is no longer just a local issue, as reaching some employees – such as EU citizens from other Member States (but also third-country nationals) and highly mobile workers (for example in international road transport) – often requires transnational cooperation.

The fact that even the notion of ‘Europeanisation’ is controversial for trade unions is shown by the perturbations around the development of a common position on the legal initiative for an adequate minimum wage presented by the European Commission in 2020. Three years earlier the ETUC (2017) adopted a resolution on a common low and minimum wage strategy. It thus might have seemed that the trade union movement had developed a position on this issue. When the Commission’s proposal was put on the table, however, a heated debate broke out within the ETUC. Among other things, there was a serious disagreement between the Nordic organisations, rejecting any interference in wage setting at EU level, and those from Central and Eastern Europe, who supported the idea of a directive. Czarzasty et al. (2020) and Lovén Seldén (2020) have described this dispute in Transfer articles. In the end, the ETUC supported the Commission’s proposal on the draft Adequate Minimum Wage Directive, while the Nordic unions separately submitted their own negative opinion to the European Commission. This set a potentially dangerous precedent with regard to the European trade union movement’s attitudes towards EU institutions in the future.

In light of the facts presented, we see no reason to believe that core trade union activities – namely collective bargaining on wages or other traditional labour standards – can lead to the creation of mechanisms for enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation, even within the framework of the supposed Europeanisation of industrial relations.

A brief look at the views of trade unionists in Central and Eastern Europe

The EU accession of post-communist Central and Eastern European countries was undoubtedly an important geopolitical event, expanding the geographical scope of democracy (O’Brennan, 2006; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, 2005). At the same time, serious doubts arose as to whether the European social model that had developed in western Europe after the Second World War could be maintained under the new circumstances (Vaughan-Whitehead, 2003: 265). These doubts stemmed first from the emergence of elements of the market economy along US lines in the early political transformation in some CEE countries. This led to – perhaps exaggerated – warnings of an American ‘Trojan horse’ in EU industrial relations (Meardi, 2002). It turned out that in the accession process, the countries of the region did not question the principles of the social market economy developed in the EU. The truth is that the European Social Model did not fully work as the CEE trade unions had expected. They had naively believed in a ‘mirror effect’, expecting that targeted signals from Brussels would trigger adaptation processes in the region that would bring social practices and standards in line with those in the old Member States (Lendvai, 2004). However, this may indicate the weakness of the model itself, which in fact is only a mix of national solutions tailored to the needs of specific countries, and therefore difficult to spread across borders (Meardi, 2012).

The other concern was more justified. The weakness of industrial relations in the new EU Member States, manifested in drastically declining trade union memberships and a similar trend in collective bargaining coverage, was a potential threat to the situation of the working class in the West (Soulsby et al., 2017), especially because Central and Eastern Europe had become a dream location for ‘optimising’ personnel management in export-oriented MNCs. This was reflected in union narratives in western Europe. The terms ‘wage dumping’ and ‘relocation of production’ came to prominence (Bernaciak, 2014; Gheorghe and Panazan, 2021). As it turned out, however, 20 years after enlargement, none of the four freedoms of the Single Market have shaken the stability of labour markets in western Europe. Moreover, the old Member States gained many specialists without incurring any costs. From the current perspective, it is clear that it was the CEE countries that suffered more from glaring wage disparities between the two parts of the EU, as there was an alarming outflow to the West of qualified workers educated with public money. This phenomenon is bluntly referred to as ‘brain drain’ (see, for example, Lutz et al., 2019).

What has been the upshot of eastern enlargement for CEE trade unions and what do they expect in the future? In this respect, we decided to ask a group of friendly experts and trade union leaders from eight CEE countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia). We do not call it real academic research but rather a brief informal survey intended to help us understand what we see as the expectations gap between East and West. Therefore, we will not use numbers or references to individual countries here.

When asked about the period in which the EU’s impact on workers in their countries was greatest, the answers pointed to the period of accession negotiations or shortly thereafter. In other words, respondents did not believe that subsequent EU legislative action or standalone initiatives by the European trade union movement had a significant impact on their home countries. In our opinion, this indicates a critical assessment of the dynamics of the EU acquis in the area of labour, that, for a very long time, there have been no new initiatives whose implementation would be important and would change anything in the workplace. Moreover, the answers indicate that only the implementation of ‘hard’ instruments (such as directives) around labour and social policy is perceived as having a real impact in the CEE countries. This is important because it implies a lack of faith in independent trade union initiatives that can bring about cross-border solutions that might positively affect the situation of CEE workers and may even undermine the impact of European autonomous framework agreements concluded since accession.

Concerning cross-border institutional cooperation between trade unions, most respondents said that they thought trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe and the ‘old’ Member States were coming to understand each other better and better. But what about the quality of this understanding? One viewpoint worried us a little: ‘They understand each other better, but there is less solidarity between them’. This could indicate that the development of superficial contacts does not necessarily translate into mutual, in-depth cooperation.

Most respondents believe that the organisations they represent are visible in the ETUC/ETUF. However, this may be wishful thinking. Our practical experience of how often representatives of Central and Eastern European organisations attend meetings of ETUC working bodies, or orally present the views of their organisations is different, suggesting the need for more in-depth research into the existence (or otherwise) of such visibility.

Most respondents believe that trade union activity in the ETUC or ETUFs helps to defend workers’ interests effectively at the national level. But they also indicate that their organisations lack the human resources to fully create and exploit a synergy between European and national activities.

Respondents identified financial and human resources as the main obstacles to building a transnational dimension to trade union cooperation. In our view, however, the main obstacle is the differences in mentality, strategy and tactics of organisations in different countries (which translates into different priorities), as well as the communication barrier (especially language).

Interestingly, the ETUC is perceived less as a centre for coordinating trade union activities and more as a lobbying institution, a vehicle for influencing EU institutions, especially the European Parliament.

Regarding collective bargaining, all respondents see the need to increase the number of workers covered by collective bargaining but clearly have high expectations in terms of transnational support or cooperation in relation to Article 4 of the Directive on adequate minimum wages (measures extending the scope of collective bargaining). Pinning such high hopes solely on EU initiatives could soon lead to serious disappointment.

On the other hand, generally, respondents seem to have come to terms with the fact that European solutions to collective bargaining on key elements of trade union activity are not to be expected in the near future (if at all). Let us take a look at two specific responses: ‘Industrial relations continue to be mainly the result of national circumstances’, and ‘Most decision-making power remains at the national level. There is no reason to expect the supranational level to be appropriate until that changes’. According to our respondents, the most important shortcoming in the strategy of the European trade union movement (ETUC/ETUFs) in the field of transnational cooperation is the lack of a common policy towards multinational companies and the lack of action on wage equalisation between the East and the West. These two issues are seen as particularly problematic in the current policies of European trade union organisations.

New challenges as an opportunity to build trade union solidarity?

In this section, we look at the possibility of building enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation in new areas, in response to new challenges. We make no secret of the fact that we are somewhat desperately seeking a thesis that would allow for a more optimistic tone in this article regarding the possibility of developing enhanced multilateral cooperation among EU trade unions.

As we emphasised at the beginning of this article, the realisation of enhanced cooperation in the traditional areas of trade union interest and activity in the EU would require remodelling industrial relations systems in individual Member States and a focus on building their EU dimension. Examples include supporting proper bargaining for European MNC employees (TCAs), establishing sectoral European minimum wages or, more broadly, sectoral rules for determining wage issues for particularly mobile categories of workers who (really or virtually) perform work across borders. In our view, the actions of the European trade union movement have to date demonstrated only limited will in this regard.

What areas therefore might be suitable for implementing enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation? Realistically, these would be tasks outside the core of trade union activity and would be more of a response to new challenges in the world of work. Among these new challenges, we can point to the increasing use of AI (so far mainly in the form of algorithmic management) in the work environment; demographic change (the need to adapt the work environment to the needs of older or disabled workers); and the growing need to manage work-related stress and other psychosocial challenges (in response to the growth of jobs in the service sector, which tend to generate stress, the increasing intensification of work and the new risks associated with remote working).

What is the evidence that these new areas (new challenges) are susceptible to enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation? These are largely virgin areas, in which no national tradition of trade union action has been developed. Symbolically speaking, there is less trade union ‘family silver’ to protect from outside influence. This may prompt an attempt to build some solutions at the EU level from the outset rather than at the Member State level. For example, there is an almost universal conviction among trade unions that the topic of platform work regulation – a relatively new phenomenon on the labour market – should be tackled at the EU level.

We are aware, in relation to the greater possibility of developing EMTC in new as opposed to core areas along the East-West axis, that trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe are very passive. For example, they have contributed little to the trade union debate around AI and boast only modest achievements as regards organising and representing platform workers.

Finally, perhaps the most controversial issue is working out a common response to the EU’s climate policy. Here, the situation is quite complicated. For example, it is known that Polish trade unions have, in principle, a sceptical attitude towards some solutions. The European trade union movement is open to striving for climate goals, but initial enthusiasm seems to be waning. It is possible that the introduction of the Fit for 55 Package will be associated with negative social effects on such a scale that it will require huge social transfers (which many EU countries may not be able to handle) and the need for in-depth involvement of workers’ representatives in sectors at risk (as yet unforeseen by the EU legislator). At present, trade unions are mainly concerned with finding national solutions. But if climate transition decision-making is not ‘fair’ and seems to be heading towards adverse outcomes for European workers, enhanced transnational cooperation will be essential.

In each of the new areas (new challenges), there is a need to build an EU grid of union expectations and demands. After all, there are numerous other challenges to be faced by European trade unions, such as a strategy for coping with third-country migrants in the EU labour market. What we propose here is simply to look for enhanced trade union cooperation on issues on which national trade unions are not bound by time-honoured traditions.

Concluding remarks

The subject of our article was the issue of establishing enhanced permanent cooperation among trade unions across the EU, in particular after the EU enlargement to CEE countries in 2004–2007. We have not touched on the important issue of ideological differences between trade union organisations or their identities because that would require a proper empirical study. We encourage scholars to undertake such studies, although it is a very controversial topic. We ourselves work for a union that strongly emphasises its Christian roots based on national tradition, which is reflected in the approach to some policies of a progressive nature. However, in our view, this does not affect the understanding of the need to conduct joint cross-border activities to protect employee interests.

In our opinion, transnational cooperation between EU trade unions on what are traditionally core issues for the labour movement has not developed a permanent and extensive character, and its improvement seems less and less possible. The so-called Europeanisation of industrial relations manifests itself primarily in the growth of top-down initiatives of the EU institutions affecting national systems. On the other hand, enhanced trade union cooperation does not seem to be developing at European level.

The European Social Dialogue mechanism, especially at the cross-sectoral level, does not produce results that can be seen by ordinary trade union members. EWCs are too often used by MNCs as part of their personnel management systems. And the coordination of collective bargaining, if it exists in some sectors, is very fragile. It is therefore difficult to assume that there is a bottom-up trade union strategy to develop European industrial relations.

There are many reasons for the failure of true industrial relations to develop at European level. Employers certainly do not want it, and it does not seem that the European Commission is particularly keen. There is also a problem on the trade union side because some organisations do not even want any EU influence on industrial relations, as shown by the response to the Minimum Wage Directive. We fully understand the determined resistance of the Nordic trade unions to the undermining of their national autonomous solutions, although in our personal estimation this is something like the last desperate defence of a besieged fortress against the freedoms of the Single Market. It seems not even to take the medium term into account, let alone the long term.

To take one example of trade union timidity, let us look at international road transport drivers. Publicly proposing a negotiated European minimum wage in this highly mobile cross-border sector could end the unpleasant debates around wage dumping and reduce tensions arising from the side effects of the Mobility Package. However, this topic has never even been introduced to the agenda of the European Transport Workers’ Federation. This is a pity because it could be a flagship example of how to accelerate the achievement of upward wage convergence within the EU through sectoral arrangements.

Looking ahead, we believe that the current national industrial relations systems, with their roots in the traditions of many countries, especially the ‘old’ EU, may not survive in their present form in the face of the upcoming energy and climate transformation (despite promises to provide adequate social protections for disappearing or transforming sectors), the effects of technological change (including the development of cross-border remote working, accelerating robotisation and workforce management by algorithms) and migratory pressure (large numbers of workers from third countries difficult to organise by trade unions). Having this in mind there is a need to establish at least an ‘emergency exit’, namely, to develop patterns of enhanced multi-union transnational cooperation that could result in concrete achievements in the European dimension. Since – in our view, regrettably – it does not seem realistic in the foreseeable future in ‘core’ areas, we need to look for opportunities in those new areas where trade unions (regardless of the country of origin) have not developed national strategies and practices and are not bound by their own traditions. This may be a key element for the future of trade unions in the EU, closing the East-West gap and a bridge to their revitalisation on a transnational scale.