European Wage Coordination: Nightmare or Dream to come true? ENEPRI Working Paper No. 20, June 2003
This paper analyses recent trends in wage bargaining institutions in Europe to explain the gradual deterioration in the bargaining position of trade unions. It appears that the integration of European economies is an important factor. This raises the question whether trade unions will respond by coordinating their wages internationally. Our conjecture is that the opportunities for wage coordination are not very strong. This is because of the numerous obstacles associated with heterogeneous structures in wage setting in the EU. Softer coordination, e.g. in the form of information exchange or agreements on common rules in wage setting, is more likely to occur and has already been introduced in some cases.