Strasbourg, 18/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is ending a legal loophole that allowed low cost airlines “leaving their employees with inferior social security rights in a separate country to that in which they live and have their centre of interests”. Pilots and air hostesses must now enjoy the social conditions of the country where they are based, without having to beg favours from the airlines. On Wednesday 15 April, the European Parliament endorsed new rules to coordinate social security systems in Europe. The vote also clarifies the situation of cross-border freelance workers' rights to unemployment benefit.
MEPs voted through a resolution by 540 to 19 with 30 abstentions based on a report by Milan Cabrnoch (ECR, Czech Republic), who explained that the new rules would ensure a better functioning of the single market by improving social security for many mobile workers.
Introducing the notion of “base where people are registered for work”, Cabrnoch has solved a tricky situation for airline staff. The MEPs had constantly in mind the example of Ryanair, which makes its staff work under the Irish welfare system, irrespective of where they actually work. Staff will now be subject to the social security system of the country where they begin and end their work time. The Greens say this is a victory: “The EP has today voted to end the chicanery by unscrupulous businesses, which enabled them to give their employees the lowest common denominator social security coverage, with a view to cutting their costs”, said Jean Lambert (Greens/EFA, UK).
The vote at the EP also solves another problem - that of unemployment rights for self-employed workers living in a country that does not grant such rights to the self-employed, but who work in a country that does provide such rights. France and Belgium do not provide unemployment benefit to self-employed workers, but Luxembourg and Germany do. The new rules will enable the self-employed to receive unemployment benefit from the country where they work.
The resolution signed by the EP endorses the approach that emerged from the Council of Ministers in December 2011, which means the legislation can probably be approved in first reading. (MD/transl.fl)