All Quiet on the Northern Front — the EU Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages as Seen from Sweden

ON 15 NOVEMBER 2024, the deadline for the implementation of the European Union (EU) Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages1 (hereinafter the Directive) passed. While most of the EU Member States have missed it (ETUC, 2024), a group of countries has instead opted for what the European Trade Union Institute senior researcher Torsten Müller defines as a “minimalistic” transposition (Staunton, 2024). Sweden is among them. The governmental inquiry issued in 2023 states that the Swedish system already meets the Directive’s requirements (Gunnarsson, 2023). No implementing measures are therefore needed — besides an extension of the tasks assigned to the National Mediation Office in collecting data on wage levels and collective agreement coverage that, following Art. 10 of the Directive, need to be reported to the European Commission every second year.