Brussels, 05/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Transport Workers Federation (ETF) has strongly rejected the Monti II draft regulation, included in the legislative package on posted workers, which the European Commission presented on Wednesday 21 March (EUROPE 10579). It has already been criticised by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and French government, which said that it was not going to agree to this package being adopted. The Monti II regulation is the subject of much attention because it seeks to put forward a balance between the free provision of services and the right to carry out collective action. This balance has to be ensured under the proportionality principle, which suggests that in certain circumstances there may be a danger that the right to strike could be restricted. On Wednesday 4 April, the ETF stated that that the Commission, “is paving the way for social dumping and harming the functioning of the internal market”.
The Commission has based its response on several European Court of Justice rulings (Viking-Line and Laval affairs) but the ETF points out that these decisions have been criticised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The possibility of introducing legal restraints could prove detrimental to collective action organised by the unions and would be in violation of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions 87 (on union freedom and the protection of union rights, 1948). This is an appropriate selection of jurisprudence for the transport unions because in similar cases (Demir and Baykara versus Turkey and Enerji Yapý-Yol Sen versus Turkey) at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the right of association, which implies the right to strike, was described as a fundamental right and could only be restricted in exceptional circumstances. In the second ruling, the Court in Strasbourg emphasises that, “the right to strike is recognised by International Labour Organisation (ILO) monitoring bodies, as the essential corollary of the right of union association under Convention C87 of the ILO”. The European Social Charter also recognises the right to strike as a means of ensuring the effective exercise of the right to pursue collective bargaining. The Commission should take into consideration these rulings, particularly because since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the EU's accession to the ECHR is compulsory (art. 6), even though no date has yet been set for this to come into effect. (JK/trans.fl)