The Pay Exclusion, Procedural Competence, and the Limits of Social Constitutionalism After the Ruling of the Court of Justice on the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive

The Grand Chamber judgment of 11 November 2025 in Case C-19/23, in which Denmark successfully challenged selected provisions of Directive (EU) 2022/2041 on adequate minimum wages, constitutes one of the most constitutionally significant rulings in recent EU social law. This article examines the judgment from the perspective of EU constitutional law rather than labour law, focusing on four interconnected questions: the interpretation of the Article 153(5) TFEU pay exclusion; the annulment of the adequacy criteria of Article 5(2) and the non-regression clause of Article 5(3); the Court’s disengagement from the fundamental rights dimension, including Article 31 of the EU Charter; and the constitutional asymmetry between the Court’s deferential treatment of Troika austerity conditionality and its strict review of upward social harmonisation. The article argues that while the judgment preserves a meaningful space for EU social legislation, its minimalist approach – rejecting a rights-conforming interpretation and stripping ‘adequacy’ of any common methodological content – represents a missed constitutional opportunity. It concludes by identifying the interpretive resources – Article 3(3) TEU, the Charter, ILO Convention No. 131, and the European Social Charter – that could support a more ambitious social constitutionalism in future litigation.