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With the completion of the Single Market, the creation of the Monetary Union, and EU enlargement to the east EU integration has changed substantially over the past two decades, and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the - at present - 12 European branch trade union organizations have been confronted by historically unprecedented challenges. On the one hand, this is involves the highly complex »management of diversity«, both politically and organizationally, as a result of the enlargement of the membership, while on the other hand, it involves an enormously difficult »management of interdependence« as a result of the continuing market liberalization and monetary integration. In comparison to the profiles of the European trade union associations in the first decades after the founding of the European Community, which mainly had the character of round tables and forums, the development of European associations since the 1990s has taken the form of gradual, in some areas substantial progress in the Europeanization of trade union policy. Not least in the areas of wage policy, corporate policy, and labor policy negotiations within the framework of social dialogue the transnational organizational framework has become the »space« of an increasingly more binding and topically more specific coordination of interests and actions among the national member associations. These successes with regard to Europeanization continue to be confronted by deficits with regard to transnationalization. This includes the unresolved problem of making available adequate resources to the secretariats of European associations and contradictions between »European declarations« and »national practice«. These contradictions are owing not least to different national trade union traditions and the power potential of member associations and the Europe-policy orientations which are derived from them. In the near future, the extreme differences between the measures taken to cope with the financial market and euro crises will structurally impede transnational interest harmonization among trade unions, and therefore urgently require intensified European coordination and a pro-active policy on Europe. Besides the exertion of influence on macro-policy and macroeconomic developments in the EU and the European monetary system - a primary task of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) - the European trade union branch organizations are above all confronted with the task of developing their transnational coordination in the areas of wage policy and of optimizing their corporate policy approaches transnationally by means of European works councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La negociación colectiva intersectorial, sectorial y de empresa viene adquiriendo una dimensión transnacional europea desde mediados de los años noventa. Fomentadas al principio por las instituciones de la Unión Europea, estas variantes de la negociación colectiva se han desarrollado después de manera autónoma. Es difícil saber al día de hoy qué efectos concretos va a tener dicho proceso, si es que los tiene, en las condiciones de trabajo individuales. Fundándose en un informe presentado a la Comisión Europea en 2005, el autor defiende que el asunto sea objeto de una norma comunitaria - un reglamento del Consejo con arreglo a los títulos del Tratado de la Unión Europea dedicados a la política social y la cohesión socioeconómica - para dotar así a la negociación colectiva transnacional de un marco optativo de desenvolvimiento. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on European Union (EU) countries in terms of social policy and workforce exchange. In several cases, corporations from EU countries like Latvia or Poland refused to apply the social minimum wage imposed by the countries to which their employees were sent, like Sweden or Germany. The Court of Justice of the European Communities ruled in favor of these corporations. This decision was viewed negatively by the European Trade Union Confederation.