Remarkably, the core element of labour relations wage determination has been excluded from the European social dialogue about harmonisation of working conditions and national systems of social security. The present study responds by analysing the prospects of building up structures of wage formation in Europe through a reevaluation of collective bargaining and collective agreements as they exist under the law of the most industrialized Member States. The impetus for the study is the widely debated crisis of the system of concluding regional collective agreements on wages. Social partners seem to have been trapped in fruitless conflicts on how the system must be reformed. It has become obvious that no party concerned employers, trade unions, the state has the capacity to resolve the growing difficulties of collective wage formation.