Protocol on social policy
The Maastricht Social Protocol and Social Agreement , as a protocol to the Treaty on European Union, was part of the final act of the Maastricht Intergovernmental Conference on February 7, 1992. It represents an important step in the development of social policy in the European Union . Its full title is: “Protocol on social policy, to which an agreement on social policy between the Member States of the European Community, with the exception of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is attached. "
prehistory
The 1957 EEC Treaty already contained provisions on social policy; however, this did not establish any socio-political community responsibilities. From 1985 the then President of the Commission Jacques Delors explicitly put the need for a social policy in the European Union on the agenda.
The first, very narrow, supranational legislative powers in the field of health and safety at work were only given to the EC with the Single European Act of 1987 . The 1989 Community Charter of Basic Social Rights of Workers, which was more comprehensive in content , was only of a declaratory nature, but did not have any legally binding effect on the member states.
The goal of translating the Community Charter into binding policy and the new attempt at realizing European Economic and Monetary Union also led to an intensification of efforts to make progress in socio-political integration within the framework of the Intergovernmental Conference, which began in 1990 to negotiate what would later become the Maastricht Treaty. However, this was radically opposed by the conservative British government under Margaret Thatcher and her successor John Major for regulatory reasons.
Since it was therefore not possible to include new social policy provisions in the EC Treaty, the remaining (then eleven) Member States, excluding Great Britain, concluded an additional agreement to create expanded joint competences in the field of social policy.
content
The social agreement differed from the previous contractual provisions in the following points:
- by expanding the socio-political community competencies, in particular for setting minimum labor standards;
- by making it easier for decisions to be made, as the social agreement enabled qualified majority votes in some areas in the EU Council instead of unanimous decisions;
- through the further development of the social dialogue, which has been promoted by the EU Commission since the mid-1980s, into a completely new institutional arrangement in the political system of the EC / EU, in which the results of European collective bargaining of the umbrella organizations of employees and employers can be incorporated into Community law.
consequences
Overall, on the basis of the social agreement, little political activity developed between 1993 and 1999, despite the expanded possibilities. It was the legal basis for only four directives.
With Directive 94/45 / EC on the establishment of a European works council in companies operating across the Community, however, a solution could be found for a proposal that had been blocked by Great Britain since 1980 (the so-called Vredeling Directive), so that in this case the social agreement meets its objectives to circumvent the British blockade on a common social policy, was fair.
In 1997, under the newly elected government of Tony Blair , Great Britain gave up its resistance to the Community social policy linked to the social protocol and social agreement, which is still very limited in content. As a result, the text of the 1999 social agreement with the Amsterdam Treaty was incorporated into the EC Treaty as Article 137 ff. The social protocol itself thus became irrelevant.
Integration policy significance
Two-speed Europe
Great Britain was the only member state to speak out against this (comparatively small) step to deepen integration in the area of social policy and blocked its inclusion in the treaty, so that the other member states chose this intermediate integration policy step. The Maastricht social protocol or social agreement is thus a good example of a policy of graduated integration (“Europe of two speeds”), in which not all integration steps have to be carried out by all member states at the same time.
The inclusion of a clause in the Amsterdam Treaty (Art. 43 TEU) for greater cooperation between Member States that are more willing to integrate is to be seen as a consequence of experience with the social protocol and social agreements. As a test of the flexibility of integration, the social agreement is to be seen as a success insofar as it did not lead to a permanent Europe à la carte , but rather the uniformity of the acquis communautaire was restored in this area.
Transnational networking of social actors
In 1992, for the first time, the possibility was created for the umbrella organizations of employees and employers to conduct autonomous collective bargaining at Community level and to conclude binding agreements which - similar to the national declaration of general applicability of collective agreements - can be incorporated into Community law. On the employee and employer side, this has led to a significant intensification of cooperation between social actors from the member states within the framework of the respective umbrella organizations, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and BusinessEurope (formerly UNICE) and CEEP (for public employers).
literature
- Wolfgang Kowalsky: European social policy. Starting conditions, driving forces and development potential . Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1999.
- Patrick Thalacker: A social model for Europe? EU social policy and the European social model in the context of EU enlargement . Berlin: Logos, 2006.
- Thorsten G. Arl: "Social Policy after Maastricht". Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997.