Brussels, 04/08/2011 (Agence Europe) - Revision of the European working time directive has provoked a number of concerns in France. On Wednesday 3 August, the president of the national fire-fighters federation (FNSPF), Colonel Richard Vignon, did not hesitate to describe this directive as being “dangerous”, according to a report by the AFP agency. His concern specifically involves the provisions that could assimilate voluntary work into the directive and therefore make regulation of this activity compulsory at levels of social insurance and working time. This last point has made Colonel Vignon most angry. He said that they currently had a legal provision that facilitated the employment of voluntary fire fighters and protected their social welfare more effectively, as well as protecting them more effectively at a legal level. He said that despite this, the European Commission was threatening the system by making voluntary work into a professional activity and subsequently making 11 hours of daily rest time obligatory. The president of the FNSPF considers that, “this is the death of voluntary work because 80% of our forces will collapse”. Given the similarity between the French civil security forces and those of other EU member states, the problem also concerns everyone else, he explained.
One of the goals in the directive is to work out minimum rules on working time. Last December, the European Commission's re-examination of this directive entered its second phase. This consists in consulting workers and employers' representatives at an EU level, who should have the right to give their opinions about alternatives, “which consist in providing a more narrow or broader remit in the revision”, explained the Commission. At this stage, the Commission has simply collated a specific dataset, explained one source. No decision has therefore been taken yet and the question of regulating voluntary work is still pending. The dossiers put on the table for discussions in this second phase involve: standby time; rest period programming; protection against working excessive hours; a rebalance between time spent at work and one's family life and clarification of more ambiguous cases. The ideas expressed by Colonel Vignon can therefore be interpreted more as an appeal by the sector concerned by the revision of the directive than an observation of the real progress in this directive. On this question he concluded that, “I want us to be vigilant and proactive to ensure that Europe does not make any mistakes and deliver a fatal blow to the security of European citizens”. (J.K.trans/fl)