In the European coordination of collective bargaining has become an important new field of policy making within the European trade unions. The association between European social dialogue and collective bargaining, however, is in many respects misleading. The narrow scope of the content of European social dialogue and its limited legal competence reflect the fact that trade unions and employers' associations have fundamentally different interests regarding European social regulation. The establishment of interregional collective bargaining networks creates an opportunity to incorporate a 'European dimension' into everyday national collective bargaining and strengthen the idea of European coordination at lower trade union levels. One important institutional innovation was the European Metalworkers’ Federation Collective Bargaining Conference. In view of the 'voluntaristic' nature of the coordination approach, together with the various political and institutional problems of implementation, the prospects for the European trade union coordination of collective bargaining policy would not appear to be very promising.