Large EU countries are sacrificing the Danish cause. “If you scratch a bit in the speeches, there is no real desire to take into account that we in the Nordic countries have a special model.”

16 comments

  1. The other EU members ignore Danish arguments when it comes to the fight for the Danish model. Danish politicians have the “feeling that you speak for the deaf ear”.

    Solveig Gram Jensen – European correspondent

    Lonely. Deaf ear. Limited understanding.

    It is uphill when the majority of the 14 Danish members of the European Parliament are fighting against an EU directive on the minimum wage.

    Both the Danish government and the trade union movement fear that the directive will be the beginning of the end of the Danish labor market model, where the trade union movement and employers agree on wage and working conditions themselves.

    But apart from Sweden, Denmark has virtually no support for its case in Brussels.

    That is why Members of Parliament stand alone when debates are running high.

    Marianne Vind, Member of the European Parliament for Social Democracy, is a member of the Employment Committee. Here she is one of the few who will vote against the directive.

    “It is lonely and quite unpopular in the committee,” she tells Berlingske.

    The crucial criticism from Denmark and Sweden is that the EU Commission does not have the right to interfere in the salaries of individual countries.

    Still, the question does not take up much space in the debates, Marianne Vind continues. Instead, it is mostly about the so-called working poor. These are wage earners who probably have a job but do not earn enough to live on a single job.

    “There is very little talk of legal basis. It seems that many people think that the goal justifies the means. Many countries have a working poor and in their eyes an EU minimum wage is the solution.”

    Pernille Weiss, Member of the European Parliament for the Conservatives, also has that experience.

    “Sometimes you can get the feeling that you are speaking for the deaf ear. There is some vibe that the minimum wage is good for everyone. ”

    The directive emphasizes that the intention is not to destroy the Danish model. And as such, Denmark, Sweden and the four other countries without a minimum wage are not forced to introduce one.

    The government’s horror scenario is – in very short – that if an EU citizen in Denmark brings a case on the minimum wage before the European Court of Justice, experience says that the court will let the consideration of the individual citizen outweigh national practice. And that way, the minimum wage will still find its way through the back door.

    Germany and France in particular are pushing for the directive to be adopted. In Germany, the minimum wage is about 71 kroner. The unions and the Social Democrats have long fought for it up to about 89 kroner. As it has not succeeded, they have chosen to use the EU to force it through.

    It may be that it succeeds at home in Germany, now that all indications are that the country will have a Social Democratic chancellor. But it is also part of the picture that, despite the minimum wage, Germany has 1.2 million wage earners who earn too little to survive without public support. This is due to a number of labor market reforms that were adopted around the turn of the millennium.

    The French support is mainly due to France taking over the EU presidency from January. And in April, the French have to elect a new president. Therefore, the country’s incumbent president, the super-European Emmanuel Macron, hopes to have the bill passed as early as March, so that he can later entice voters with a new European minimum wage.

    Morten Løkkegaard, who is in Brussels for the Liberal Party, has recently been to Paris, where he met with Macron:

    “I am fighting my battle with the French. In Paris, I argued that if they want to prevent this union from breaking down in the middle, they need to rethink the socio-economic agenda. ”

    But he continues:

    “They are aware of it, but they can not sacrifice their own agenda on this one. Macron demands the minimum wage, that’s what this is. ”

    The Unity List’s Nikolaj Willumsen is a member of the Employment Committee of the European Parliament. He does not think there is much understanding of the Danish model among the other members of parliament. For example, he explains that the European Parliament’s two chief negotiators on the directive have so far flatly rejected all Danes’ attempts to write even more clearly in the directive that Denmark must not be covered by it:

    “It says something about the fact that if you scratch in the speeches, there is no real desire to take into account that we in the Nordic countries have a very special model.”

    The Danish People’s Party’s Peter Kofod, who is a deputy in the Employment Committee, agrees with the criticism. He believes that the minimum wage directive puts Denmark’s EU membership in a completely new perspective:

    “If not minimum wage is deciding wage, then I do not know what is. Then people like me are right in that you have never been able to trust the EU. ”

    Google translate.

    Edit:

    [The Danish labour model](https://workplacedenmark.dk/working-conditions/the-danish-labour-market/)

    [Trade union density OECD](https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TUD)

  3. Well if that article is an example of how they explain the Danish Model, no wonder they are not being listened to.

    It doesn’t seem like it would be hard to put a clause in of: Minimum wage or nationally agreed wage and working conditions agreed by an Employer’s Confederation.

    I think the sticking point could be the voluntary nature of the Danish Model.

  4. The Danish model involves a “work court”. Here representatives from unions and employers negotiate work related conflicts before an arbitration judge.

    It cost basically nothing for a wage earner to let the unions lawyers bring the case to the work court. It is much faster than normal court and its rulings applies to the entire Danish job market.

    What unions fear is that EU court will supercede this Danish work court and employers can shit on Danish collective agreements or bring them to the EU court knowing it will take years before they finish. And by that time the foreign company has left Denmark and the project where it exploited workers is done.

    For unions the tool is conflict and strike. They can not have a years long EU court screwing with the only tools they got as weapons.

  5. For those wondering what the Danish or Nordic model is: Trade unions and employers negotiate wages independently each year. This sets a precedence for the entire branch of trade in question, even for non-unionized workers. The state only functions as a mediator if negotiations breaks down and the resulting strike/lockdown goes too far, and generally don’t have much say.

    This system works because of the strong trade unions here in the north. A minimum wage set by the government is only really necessary in nations with weak tradition of unionized labor marked.

  7. I’ve seen plenty of people in jobs with non unionised pay who the unions gives two shits about. This is often in business where there isn’t collective bargaining like restaurants and small independent kiosk.

    They get fucked over by Danish unions and the leftwing in Denmark ignores them.

    Edit: the other side to this, is that it creates a need for unions. It also often covers people outside unions and even business with no collective bargaining themselves. The second part is that this “minimum wage” will become the maximum wage for low pay job. Creating an incentive for employers to just pay the minimum they need set by the EU.

    >The fear is that the EU minimum will become the standard. It will basically become a “maximum” pay for low pay job. These will be called “minimum wage jobs”.

  8. Wage level in Denmark is unimportant, it’s wage level in eastern countries which need to be raised to have an homogeneous market. Consumption in Poland or Romania need to raise at the level of the richer countries if we want a really unique functionning market for 500 million people. Have people forgot the goal of the EU ? It’s convergence.

  9. Strange article. First of all it’s also a German model and not just Scandinavian. 2nd of all isn’t the discussion (thought dead currently) about introducing a minimum levels of wages in relation to national GDPs or average salaries? As minimum standards Denmark can keep it’s current system, just mind not to go below EU minimum wage levels.

  10. Maybe the Danish politicians should start with accepting that the “Danish model” is not Danish but existing in many countries

  11. And this is why i do not buy the argument that Norway would have a bigger say in things if we were a full member.

    What would happen would be that we would be ignored, and our waters would be packed with southern trawlers.

  12. These “EU minimum wage” plans are nothing less then a blatant economic attack against eastern states. Nordics are just collateral.

  14. This is food for the anti-eu segment.
    Again.. we almost don’t need them, the EU makes the leave case for them every time.

  15. My god, this article is just fluff. I cannot understand at all what is different in the Denmark system vs the rest of the EU. What are the benefits and disadvantages of introducing a EU-wide minimum wage, etc. Just a lot of “he says she says.”

  16. I think it’s time for the Nordics to leave and make their own union. With hookers and blackjack.

    Honestly the EU has no business interfering with our superior models, it should have just been a trade union, not a fucking European Superstate.

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