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Social dialogue can be defined as negotiations, consultations, joint actions, discussions and information-sharing involving employers and workers. Well-functioning social dialogue is a key tool in shaping working conditions, involving a variety of actors at various levels. It balances the interests of workers and employers and contributes to both economic competitiveness and social cohesion.
Policymakers need solid evidence to understand the changes taking place in the labour market and to respond to the changing dynamics of industrial relations in Europe. Eurofound uses data and analysis drawn from its network of correspondents in the EU Member States and Norway to map trends and patterns and to point to examples of well-functioning social dialogue at both European and national level.
Eurofound research investigates aspects such as social partner involvement in policymaking, employee involvement and participation, collective bargaining, pay and reward systems, employee representation and industrial relations at all levels. It examines the extent to which industrial relations have adapted to the emergence of multinational organisations.
The Agency has produced a large body of work extending over 40 years that has charted the many and changing facets of social dialogue in Europe at various levels: company, sectoral, national, European and international.
The industrial relations flagship report published in 2022 presents an overview of the most important developments in industrial relations, including social dialogue, between 2015 and 2019. Other work in this area maps the key dimensions of industrial relations.
The Agency maps the form and quality of social partner involvement in national policymaking in various outputs. Since 2020, the EU PolicyWatch database monitors if and how social partners contributed to designing or implementing national policies to cushion the socioeconomic impacts of policies set in various crisis contexts. The quality of the national social partners’ involvement in designing and implementing reforms and policies in the context of the European Semester process are monitored since 2016. Annual working papers from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on developments in working life, including industrial relations, completes the picture on social dialogue and social partner involvement from the national level.
Eurofound’s representativeness studies carried out across multiple sectors, following a mandate from the Commission in 2006, provide the basic information needed for the setting up and functioning of the European sectoral social dialogue committees.
Eurofound’s main tool to monitor company-level social dialogue is the European Company survey (ECS), with the latest edition completed in 2019. Among other aspects, it monitors the existence of company-level employee representation structures, company social dialogue and collective bargaining in the different national contexts.
Social dialogue is a key principle of the European Pillar of Social Rights proclaimed in 2017. The emergence of new debates on social justice, democracy, the quality of work and new models for labour relations have been challenging traditional industrial relations and social dialogue systems.
Thirty years after the historic inauguration of European social dialogue at Val Duchesse in Brussels, the European Commission relaunched the process of a new start for social dialogue at a high-level event bringing together social partner organisations from across Europe on 5 March 2015. European social dialogue is an instrument of EU social policy, contributing directly to shaping EU labour legislation and policies.
On 25 January 2023, the Commission proposed a Council Recommendation on 'strengthening social dialogue in the EU' and published a new Communication on reinforcing and promoting social dialogue, ‘harnessing its full potential for managing fair transitions’, as announced in the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan. In September 2023, Commission President von der Leyen announced a social partner summit in 2024 to echo the summit held in 1985.
