The European Social Dialogue (ESD) has served as the platform for European social partners to negotiate parental leave policies at the European Union (EU) level since 1995.

The partners’ efforts to revise the regulations in 2015, in response to the European Commission’s broader approach toward European work–life balance policies, failed, however, and the reasons for and implications of this failure remain insufficiently explored.

Drawing on existing ESD literature and leveraging the regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, the authors, including Professor Trine Larsen, develop a typology of policymaking outcomes based on the analysis of three parental leave directives from 1996 to 2019.

The findings demonstrate that divergent preferences among European social partners, particularly when juxtaposed against the Commission’s policy objectives and interests, reduced the probability of a successful ESD through which European social partners could generate a framework agreement. Instead of being rule-makers, these conditions relegated European social partners to the role of rule-takers. If this trend continues, it poses a significant challenge to the role and influence of European social partners in EU policymaking.