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ORCID

Giulia Mangiafico – 0009-0008-0570-5006

Keywords

antitrust law, labour right protection, wage setting, collective agreements, employers’ collusion, Articles 101 and 102 TFEU

Abstract

Labour rights protection has recently emerged as one of the key objectives of antitrust law, alongside sustainability and privacy. The application and enforcement of competition rules differ significantly between the workers’ and employers’ sides of the market, a distinction that is particularly visible in cases concerning remuneration. Wage-setting may fall within the scope of Article 101 TFEU where it results from coordination between undertakings; whether competition law applies therefore depends on how wages are fixed. While employer cartels that suppress pay are treated as restrictive agreements, collective bargaining arrangements are assessed under a markedly different analytical framework. This article examines the distinct strategies through which the CJEU and the European Commission are enhancing worker protection through antitrust law. It contributes to the broader discussion on the use of competition law beyond purely economic objectives, while highlighting the limitations inherent in the different approaches to wage-setting practices.

Acknowledgements

Funding

This article received no funding.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and publication of this article.

Declaration about the scope of AI utilisation

The author did not use AI in the preparation of this article.

Page Count

18

Received Date

15.03.2025

Accepted Date

30.01.2026

DOI

10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2026.11.33.4

JEL Code

J010; K210

Publisher

University of Warsaw

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