Agreements

Agreements are the outcome of collective bargaining and social dialogue processes. Social partners are encouraged to negotiate and conclude collective agreements  that can then be implemented at European, national, regional, sectoral or company level.  Increasingly Union labour laws are shaped by agreements that the parties voluntarily enter into and by soft law mechanisms.

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Eurofound research paper

18 November 2025

Taking stock: Further experiences in gender pay transparency implementation and effectiveness
Christine Aumayr-Pintar,
Marianna Baggio
Despite decades of policy efforts, the gender pay gap in the EU, while slowly decreasing, is still persistent. In 2023, the Pay Transparency Directive was adopted, with the intent of advancing existing national approaches by mandating comprehensive transparency instruments, expanding reporting requirements, reinvigorating the ‘work of equal value’ principle, and shifting the burden of proof from workers to employers in discrimination cases, among the most significant developments.
Article

15 March 2024

A look behind 80% bargaining coverage: What do collective agreements actually contain?
Christine Aumayr-Pintar
The aim of the EU Minimum Wage Directive is to protect workers from low pay. It stipulates that Member States should strive to achieve a collective bargaining coverage of 80%. While this is a very important step in promoting collective bargaining, new research by Eurofound shows that policymakers, including the social partners, should look behind this figure: not all agreements necessarily regulate workers’ pay, and in some countries pay rates in collective agreements can be outdated for too long.
Research report
Forthcoming

December 2025

Equal value, equal pay: Concepts, mechanisms and implementation towards gender pay equity
Christine Aumayr-Pintar,
Marianna Baggio
This research is carried out in the context of the ongoing transposition of the gender pay transparency directive. The first part updates previous Eurofound research by looking into the experiences of Member States with implementing pay transparency measures and their effectiveness. The second part investigates how the work of equal value principle is implemented in practice.

Experts on Agreements

Researchers at Eurofound provide expert insights and can be contacted for questions or media requests.

Mária Sedláková

Research officer
Working life research

Mária Sedláková is a research officer in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. She is responsible for drafting overview reports for sectoral representativeness studies, management and quality control of national reporting on industrial relations, social dialogue and working life, and development of a project on collective bargaining beyond pay. Before joining Eurofound, she worked as a technical research officer within the Governance and Tripartism Department at the International Labour Organization in Geneva on the Social Dialogue Flagship Report 2022. She also worked as a researcher at the Central European Labour Studies Institute in Bratislava (2013–2020), focusing on social dialogue, collective bargaining, working conditions and sociology of work. Maria holds an MA in Political Science with specialisation in Comparative European Politics from Central European University.

Christine Aumayr-Pintar

Senior research manager
Working life research

Christine Aumayr-Pintar is a senior research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. She coordinates Eurofound’s research on social dialogue and industrial relations and oversees the Network of Eurofound Correspondents (NEC). Her primary research expertise – approached from a comparative EU-wide standpoint – centres on minimum wages, collectively negotiated pay and gender pay transparency. Prior to joining Eurofound in 2009 she was a labour markets and regional economics researcher at Joanneum Research in Austria. She earned a Master's degree in Economics and a PhD in Social Science/Economics having studied economics in Graz, Vienna and Jönköping.

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The tripartite EU agency providing knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment and work-related policies