INTERVIEW: ‘Take it off the table’: Union chief urges Brussels to protect workers’ rights

The European Commission has repeatedly rebuffed unions’ demands to drop the “threat” of rolling back workers’ protections in its push to slash red tape, according to the head of Europe’s largest trade union organisation.

Esther Lynch, general-secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), told Euractiv that Brussels’ drive to “simplify” legislation has now “shrunk into deregulation” that risks eroding European citizens’ standard of living.

“We have asked time and time again for them to take off the table that they will remove employment and trade union rights as part of any of this simplification regime,” said Lynch, whose organisation represents 45 million workers. “And time and time again, they refuse to take it off the table.” 

Lynch added that EU officials have specifically refused to guarantee that workers’ rights would be protected under the proposed “28th regime”, which would allow “innovative” firms to bypass national law, or in a series of “Omnibus” packages, which seek to cut regulations in a range of areas, from sustainability reporting to defence.

Lynch also noted that unions “do not want unnecessary burdens on business” but that Europe’s waning competitiveness is unrelated to its strong social model. This was also emphasised by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in his landmark report on the EU economy published in 2024, she added.

“Employment laws are not… what workers aspire to. Employment laws are the threshold below which it’s so unacceptable that the law will step in and say to employers, ‘You can’t do that.’” 

Her remarks come amid growing concerns about Europe’s economic and industrial malaise, marked by weak growth and stagnant or declining real wages over the past few years.

According to the ETUC, the EU shed almost a million manufacturing jobs between 2019 to 2023. Job losses have been especially pronounced in the bloc’s flagship auto industry, which is struggling to remain competitive amid steep US tariffs and increasingly fierce competition from Chinese electric vehicles.

Asked whether Brussels’ refusal to guarantee workers’ protection was intended to frighten workers, Lynch said: “I think there’s enough fear from the job losses.” 

Responding to Lynch’s comments, a Commission spokesperson said: “Our work on simplification means smart, faster implementation. It does not mean lowering our high social and environmental standards.”

Architectural ‘disaster’

Lynch was also vehemently critical of the Commission’s €2 trillion long-term budget proposal, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), calling it “too small” and saying it is “not clear” how its centralised structure “would support an industrial policy for the whole of Europe.”

Lynch also added that the proposed EU budget risks being “a disaster” for cohesion policy, which supports economic development in poorer European regions and accounts for roughly a third of the current €1.2 trillion MFF.

Her concerns echo those of many local European governments, which have criticised the new proposal’s lack of “ring-fenced” funds for social programmes and poorer regions, and have argued that the proposed new structure would exclude them from how the money is allocated.

“My fear is that those groups in society who can’t afford the big lobbyists, who don’t hang out in the decision-making circles with whoever the head of government is,” will lose out, she said.

Lynch was similarly critical of the new MFF’s much vaunted €234 billion “Competitiveness Fund”, which she said isn’t sufficiently detailed nor large enough to reverse Europe’s industrial decline. 

Lynch also suggested that Brussels’ failure to provide a path out of Europe’s industrial malaise is part of a wider problem.

“The responsibility of the Commission is to plot out what is the path of success for working people in Europe,” she said, adding that neither the proposed MFF nor the simplification agenda succeeds in this goal. 

“It’s almost like instead of a pathway to success, there’s a rocky road to somewhere else.”

(mm, jp)