Paper presented to the annual meeting of the European Group of Public Administration

This paper deals with developments in labour relations in public services in European States. It demonstrates that labour relations in public services have tended to give more importance to collective bargaining. This trend is generally observable, but not to the same degree in every country. The paper gives an overview of developments in European countries by dealing with the legal framework of labour relations in public services and by looking at the role of government employers and public service trade unions. Particular attention is further paid to the level of centralisation and decentralisation of collective bargaining, as well as to the different outcomes of collective bargaining in different European states. The nature of the civil service system has much explanatory value with regard to the outcome of collective bargaining. Reformed non career systems tend to adopt much easier collective bargaining resulting in binding collective agreements than classical career systems do. The role of the state remains in all European countries an important factor that prevents public service labour relations to become industrial relations equivalent to those found in the private sector economy.