European social dialogue and the civil services. Europeanisation by the back door?

Abstract: Since 1993, the social partners, who are increasingly organised at European level, have been involved in the formulation of EU social policy via a structured dialogue. If they wish, their agreements are transformed into directives by the Council and thus become an autonomous source of Community law. As a result, collective bargaining can take the place of legislative work. Now that European case law has placed civil servants on an equal footing with workers within the meaning of the EC Treaty, public administrations are affected by this bargaining between social partners at European level while the Member States, as employing authorities, are not institutionally involved in this process. This book is the first to deal with this “public” dimension of the European social dialogue, analysing it as a specific way of Europeanising the civil service outside government channels.

European trade union organisations of civil service employees have already been organised for a long time and have put this problem on the political agenda. But the question of the representation of the Member States within the European interprofessional social dialogue now arises as public enterprises are represented (through CEEP ) differently from private sector employers ( UNICE ).

Within the sectoral dialogue - the second mode of Community social dialogue - the setting up (in January 2004) of a local and regional government committee (the 29th Sector Committee) has rekindled the debate surrounding the central government level.

Who are the players involved? What are these European public-sector trade-union federations? What texts have already been adopted? What is their specific impact on the civil service? Where does the Commission fit into this? What should be the role of CEEP and the European network of Directors-General responsible for public administration ( EUPAN ) following the new Constitutional Treaty? What are the prospects for constructing a social dialogue for central administrations? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which takes a historical, sociological and institutional perspective.

A different way of managing relations between Member States and the European Union is emerging as well as a new “secularised” vision of public administration.