EU threatens France on labour laws with sanctions and demands wages slashed - TruePublica
EU threatens France on labour laws with sanctions and demands wages slashed
By Corporate Europe Observatory – How the EU pushed France to reforms of labour law
The current struggle in France over
labour law reforms is not just between the Government and trade unions –
a European battle is waged. The attacks on social rights stem in no
small part from the web of EU-rules dubbed ‘economic governance’,
invented to impose austerity policies on member states.
Strikes and actions across France against reforms of the country’s
labour protections, known as the El Khomri Law, demonstrate the immense
unpopularity of the measures proposed by the French Government. Chiefly
among them, to give preference to local agreements on wages and working
conditions, when the conditions in those agreements are less favourable
than the national norm inscribed in national law. This is an open
attempt to undermine collective bargaining and roll back the influence
of trade unions.
Ultimately, the French Government has formal responsibility for the
weakening of labour protection. But there is no denying that the
European Union is playing an important and perhaps decisive role in the
attacks on labour rights. What we see is the EU throwing its rulebook in
the French workers’ faces. Practically all the new rules on so-called
‘economic governance’ adopted following the eurocrisis have been
applied, and make France look like a EU test-case. The European
Commission, with the backing of the Council, has used the rules on
member states’ deficits to exert pressure, threatening with sanctions,
should the French Government not give in and seriously reform its labour
laws. Simply put, France has been required flat out to ensure higher
profitability for businesses by driving down wages. How does all of this
work?
Sanctions more likely today
First and foremost, the reforms in France are related to the
country’s deficit. Like most other EU member states, the state’s
finances looked pretty bad in the aftermath of the 2008 financial
crisis. In 2009, a case was opened against France for breaching EU rules
which stipulate that its deficit must be no higher than 3 per cent of
GDP. If taken to the extreme, this ‘excessive deficit procedure’ can
result in a fine of billions of euro, and – not least in the case of
France – a severe loss of face to its EU partners.
The ‘excessive deficit procedure’ was given more teeth with the
so-called ‘Six-Pack’ set of EU rules in 2011 – a key part of the
austerity-focused economic governance package – which introduced a
reverse majority vote in the Council: if the Commission does decide to
fine a member state, like it has threatened to do to France, there will
have to be a qualified majority against the measure from other member
states to block it. Good reasons for the French Government to be
slightly scared – and a weapon to be used in its attempt to convince
parliamentarians. The likelihood of sanctions for not meeting the budget
deficit targets is much bigger than in the past, when both Germany and
France escaped humiliation. But how to meet the Commission’s strict
targets, and how to behave to the satisfaction of the Commission, is
what clearly links the El Khomri law in France to the austerity regime
being rolled out from Brussels.
