Reconstructing the Legal Architecture of the Care Sector: EU Governance, Social Dialogue, and Italian Collective Bargaining

This article examines the emerging legal and policy architecture of the care sector in the European Union (EU) and its interaction with national collective bargaining systems, focusing on the Italian healthcare and social-care context. The first part traces the emergenge of a functional – albeit still non-binding – EU concept of the care sector, reconstructed through an extensive review of secondary legislation, soft law and strategic policy documents, and the progressive institutionalisation of care in the European Care Strategy and the 2022 Council Recommendations. Through a longitudinal analysis of EU legislative and policy sources (1998–2025), the article demonstrates that European governance increasingly embraces an integrated understanding of care, spanning health, social and long-term care, and combining both formal and informal dimensions. Despite this conceptual consolidation, however, the EU social dialogue architecture remains structurally fragmented along national cleavages, as sectoral committees reproduce distinctions between public/private, formal/informal, and domestic/institutional care. This mismatch between EU functional definition and institutional representation limits the capacity of social dialogue to contribute to coherent regulatory outcomes. The second part analyses how EU-level principles resonate within Italian industrial relations. Italian collective bargaining in healthcare and social care is characterised by significant contractual differentiation, resulting in marked wage disparities and instances of contractual dumping, particularly affecting lower-qualified care workers with limited bargaining power. The article argues that accreditation mechanisms within the National Health Service (NHS) could serve as regulatory levers to promote upward convergence, provided they are linked to collective agreements concluded by the most representative social partners. Overall, the article contends that a coherent care sector requires legal alignment between EU-level governance and national labour regulation. Strengthening EU competences, redefining social dialogue structures, and enhancing national accreditation-based safeguards emerge as key pathways to ensuring dignified working conditions and sustainable, high-quality care provision across Member States.