Usages of ‘soft’ EU labour law: the implementation of the Minimum Wage Directive

Transposition of the much-debated EU Directive on adequate minimum wages, adopted in October 2022, was due by November 2024. This article examines how the Minimum Wage Directive has (re-)shaped minimum wage and industrial relations policies in Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands in the period immediately after its adoption. Distinguishing between different ‘usages’ of EU policy, I find that decision-makers and stakeholders have employed the Directive to reframe and reconceptualise questions of low pay and collective bargaining, and to raise political awareness of them and legitimate reforms previously considered to be unfeasible or inappropriate. At the same time, while the Advocate General’s opinion for annulment casts a shadow over the Directive’s future, its translation into meaningful regulatory and policy change (especially to promote collective bargaining) remains inextricably connected to – and dependent on – domestic political strategies and power relations.