Minimum wage between public procurement and posted workers: anything new after the RegioPost case?

Abstract

The article deals with the tension among market freedoms, workers’ protection and regulatory competition in the context of public procurement. It does so by looking at the RegioPost judgment and by comparing it with the restrictive stance adopted by the Court in previous decisions, such as Rüffert and Bundesdruckerei .

The case concerned the imposition of a minimum wage requirement in a contract relating to the collection, carriage and delivery of letters, parcels and packages in the German city of Landau in Rheinland-Pfalz. The Court held that the requirement was compatible with EU law and, in particular, with EU public procurement law, read in conjunction with the Posted Workers Directive and Treaty provisions on the free circulation of services.

The line of reasoning followed by the Court can be taken as an attempt to achieve a better balance between market freedoms and social considerations in the context of public procurement by doing away with some of the excesses that characterised previous decisions.

Sweet and Maxwell: European Law Review http://www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/catalogue/productdetails.aspx?recordid=427&productid=6968

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