Move to euro to have no impact on pay and social benefits, agree Belgian social partners

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During 1998, Belgium's bipartite National Labour Council drew up agreements governing the transition to the euro single currency in terms of the calculation of pay and cash social benefits.

At the request of the Ministers for Economic Affairs and Employment, talks were held during 1997-8 between employers' and workers' representatives to analyse the impact of the transition to the European single currency (the euro) on relations between employees and employers. These talks were conducted by employers' and workers' representatives sitting on the bipartite Central Economic Council (Conseil Central de l'Economie/Centrale Raad voor het Bedrijfsleven, CCE/CRB) and National Labour Council (Conseil National du Travail/National Arbeidsraad, CNT/NAR). The process has given rise to two collective agreements in the CNT/NAR - No. 69 of 17 July 1998 and No. 70 of 15 December 1998 - and a joint opinion of the CNT/NAR and CCE/CRB, agreed on 17 December 1997.

The intention was to agree on a way to formulate pay and tax documents and on the economic and financial information that should be given to workers in joint bodies, in the light of the move from the Belgian franc to the euro. The social partners have therefore now agreed on a series of principles that they want applied to all legal and contractual measures.

The first principle is a guarantee of clear and adequate information for workers and those receiving social security benefits:

• in firms, this information will be given to the works council and/or the union delegation, but if there is neither, employers may choose their own method;

• for those receiving social security benefits, information regarding tax, pensions and social security matters should be provided by the public administration; and

• one main concern was the transparency of transactions so that employers and workers could check that the amounts paid were correct. Their representatives proposed continuing to work in Belgian francs as a reference point for pay levels (such as bonuses and pay scales) and social security benefits. A collective agreement is being prepared, but a Royal Decree of 27 November 1998 has already enacted this measure.

Secondly, transition from the Belgian franc to the euro must be neutral. There should be no impact - either positive or negative - on workers or the recipients of social security benefits. That is the central aim of collective agreement No. 69, which guarantees the continuity of contracts: no collective agreements, employment contracts or other agreements will change. In other words, pay rates, expiry dates, indexation methods and so on will still apply under the same conditions. The agreement specifies the number of decimal places to which converted amounts should be rounded.

Finally, transition from the Belgian franc to the euro must not add to administrative costs, so that the costs of the process can be limited.

The social partners have been agreed on the idea of a "European norm" for pay (BE9809242F) since 1997, and this is reflected in their new new two-year intersectoral national agreement for 1999-2000 (BE9811252F). They had thus already anticipated the negotiations on the euro. The trade union organisations, however, wanted firm guarantees. It was in this context, in September 1998, that they signed the "Doorn declaration" with trade unions from the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany, in an effort to avoid any possible pressure on wages accompanying the introduction of the single currency (DE9810278F).