A Matter of Degree: Europeanization, ILO Treaty Ratification and Labour Standards in Europe

Abstract

The EU and the ILO have invested large amounts of resources in the past 20 years in promoting core labour standards. This article examines the products on these investments, by analysing the linkage between the protection of collective labour rights, countries’ statuses in the EU, ratification of the ILO’s fundamental conventions and ILO monitoring. The article argues that labour standards were formulated to counteract competitive pressures aggravated by economic integration, by creating minimum standards. The ILO created minimum standards by designating eight conventions as fundamental conventions, and monitoring countries’ compliance. The EU promoted the ILO’s minimum standards, using hard and soft legal instruments, among its members and partner countries. The article hypothesize that these instruments have led to Europeanization and harmonization of labour standards beyond the circles of EU members and EU candidate countries. It tests these hypotheses by analysing data on labour standards in 42 European countries. The results indicate that strengthened relations with the EU are positively associated with subsequent labour standards. The article concludes in pointing out policy and theoretical implications. Namely that the EU’s external action in Europe is a promising venue of EU influence and that Europeanization is a matter of degree rather than category.

Keywords:

• Europeanization
• Labour standards
• Trade and Human rights
• Panel data
• International Labour Organization
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This is a rich and immense body of literature which includes among others: Drezner (2001), Newmark (2002), Levi-Faur (2005), Howlett and Rayner (2008), Marsh and Sharman (2009).

2. As I am interested in finding out the affect of those types of relationships, the countries are compared to those with no relations.

3. Detailed and comprehensive codebook available from author upon request.

4. Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. These are all the European countries on which there is sufficient data, with sufficient observation points, for all variables.