Brussels, 08/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - Legislative proposals by the European Commission are expected this month. They will attempt to clarify the situation affecting posted workers. Nonetheless, the opening of a legal case between temporary Polish workers employed on the building site for the EPR nuclear reactor in Flamanville could prove to be the first illustration of abusive use of the European directive involving workers sent to work on the territory of another member state from that on which usually work.
The sensitivity of the different stakes at play in this directive has already provoked successive cancellations of the Commission's new proposals (from 20 December 2011 to 7 March 2012). It will ultimately be over the next few weeks that the Commission is likely to propose a directive for application and a regulation to strengthen Directive 96/71/EC on the intra-Community posting of workers, by attempting to reconcile the freedoms of establishment, and the right to provide services, with social rights within the internal market. Proposals are finally expected to be submitted over the next three weeks, according to assurances provided by Commissioner Laszlo Andor (social affairs and employment), speaking at the “Posted workers and fundamental social rights in the single market” conference organised by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament on Wednesday 7 March.
The case of the French building and public works company, Bouygues, and its former Cypriot subcontractor, Atlanco, on the EPR nuclear reactor building site in Flamanville, highlights the symptoms relating to the intra-Community posting of workers. The first stage began on Wednesday 7 March, with a reconciliation hearing at the industrial tribunal between Atlanco and the 43 Polish workers who lodged a complaint over the absence of social and medical cover. According to Fabienne Muller, from the University of Strasbourg, speaking at the S&D conference, this case (a separate company, employing temporary Polish workers, in a French workplace) illustrates not only the “legal fiction” surrounding many companies specialising in the profitable enterprise of hiring out workers but also shows that the current directive, like the forthcoming draft review, is inadequate when it comes to tackling the scale of the problem. Whether it involves the status and rights of these workers or the effective control of the companies employing them, European labour law is insufficient and is unable to detect the abuses being committed.
The whole point of the Commission's new proposals is to ensure a delicate balance between economic freedoms and social rights, such as the right to strike. By introducing the possibility of restricting (in cases where it is “appropriate, necessary and reasonable”) one or other of these fundamental rights, the Commission is failing to propose a legislative framework that is sufficiently clear to be easily applied, explained Niklas Bruun, from the Hanken School of Economics in Finland. (JK/transl.fl)