The Council of Europe asks Spain to reform compensation for unfair dismissal. The European body issued a recommendation this Wednesday for the Government to review labor legislation on the cost of dismissal following the European Committee of Social Rights ruling against Spain for violating the European Social Charter. It resolved that the current compensation of 33 days per year worked does not comply with European regulation, in response to the complaint filed by the UGT union.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the executive body of the organization and where the 46 member states of the Council of Europe are represented, issued this morning its recommendation for Spain as a “follow-up to the decision of the European Committee of Social Rights published on July 29, 2024 on the collective claim ‘General Union of Workers (UGT) c. Spain”, indicates the organ.
“In this decision, the CEDS concluded that Spanish legislation does not offer sufficient protection to workers in the event of termination of the employment relationship due to unfair dismissal and, therefore, infringes the Revised European Social Charter,” the Council of Europe reminds Spain.
Specifically, it considered that “the maximum limits set by Spanish legislation are not high enough to repair the damage suffered by the victim,” nor do they serve to “be a deterrent for the employer.”
The legislation must be reviewed
The decision of the Council of Europe affects an internal fight within the coalition government. While the Ministry of Labor, in the hands of the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, insists that the dismissal compensation must be reformed, as UGT also demands, in the socialist wing it has continued to defend that the Spanish regulations are “coherent” with the European Social Charter and that no legal modification was necessary.
The Council of Europe considers that Spain must reform its legislation on dismissal. Specifically, it urges the Government to “proceed to review and modify the relevant legislation as provided for in the 2024 Annual Regulatory Plan to ensure that the compensation granted in cases of illegal dismissal, and any scale used to calculate it, takes into account the damage real suffered by the victims and the individual circumstances of their case.”
Furthermore, it recommends that Spain “continue efforts to guarantee that the amount of pecuniary and non-pecuniary compensation granted to victims of unfair dismissal without justified cause is dissuasive for the employer, in order to guarantee the protection of workers against this type of unfair dismissals.”
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