The COLBAR-EUROPE project wants to improve knowledge about industrial relations and social dialogue, specifically about the content of Collective Agreements in Europe. Collective bargaining is key for wage setting and working conditions, but very little is known about what exactly is agreed. Few countries code agreements, but most countries are lacking such overviews, and databases for cross-country comparisons are absent.

Since 2014 however, associate partner Wagelndicator maintains a database with full text, annotated, and coded Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs), using a standard coding scheme. ln the BARCOM project, the predecessor of COLBAR, 120 agreements from the commerce sector from 23 countries were successfully analysed. Social partners expressed their interest in getting for the first time ever insights into the content of Collective Agreements. COLBAR-EUROPE aims to deepen these insights by adding now already more than 600 agreements - from many different industries - plus 40 Transnational Company Agreements to the European Collective Database.