Brussels, 13/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - After seven meetings on the posting of workers, negotiators from the European Parliament, European Council and European Commission have succeeded in temporarily closing seven articles out of the 23 on the proposal for a directive. The head of the Parliament's negotiators, Danuta Jazlowiecka MEP (EPP, Poland), said on Thursday 13 February that she is confident, however, that a compromise can be reached on the whole text on 20 February - even though wide differences of opinion exist, especially on the management of legal responsibility in sub-contracting.
The Greek Presidency is due to present an initial compromise draft on Friday 14 February, so as to obtain the mandate for negotiating. It is essentially two articles that pose the greatest difficulty. The first compromise proposal from the Parliament on Article 9 (national control measures and administrative requirements) not only failed (see EUROPE 11017) but is also gave rise to “a heated debate” which “showed the existing differences of opinion on this point between the MEPs”, said Jazlowiecka during a meeting of the Parliament's employment and social affairs committee on Thursday 13 February. This is not a surprise as the committee went against the initial opinion of the rapporteur on this point, as well as on Article 12.
While this point is far from being settled, it is on this same Article 12 that the positions are the most antagonistic between the Parliament and the Council too. During the last trialogue meeting on Tuesday 11 February, the Parliament negotiators “informed the Presidency of the Council that their position is unbending”. However, the Council says exactly the same thing about the position of the Parliament. The Parliament “continues to want to set up an obligatory joint and several liability mechanism in all the sectors and in the whole sub-contracting chain”, said Jazlowiecka. The Council is currently busy working with great difficulty on making this principle obligatory only for those who want it - just in the construction industry and furthermore limited to direct sub-contracting.
Elsewhere, MEPs have realised that the Council text “is stuffed with revision clauses”. This is quite a current practice but, in the view of the chair of the Parliament's employment and social affairs committee, Pervenche Berès (S&D, France), these clauses are “in almost all the articles, including with discrepancies which mean that things are not at all logical any more”. She gave an example of this. After the interinstitutional agreement, up to two years will be needed for this directive to enter into force, then three years for a revision. However, it is only at the end of five years, so only after the revision, that the Commission is asked to present its assessment report with its ideas for amendments.
Currently, the negotiators have reached provisional compromises, closing Chapter III (administrative cooperation) on the following articles: Article 6 (mutual assistance - general principles); Article 7 (role of the member state of establishment); Article 8 (accompanying measures); Article 10 (inspections); Article 11 (defending rights, facilitating complaints, payments in arrears); Article 18 (internal market information system); Article 19 (amendment of IMI regulation). (JK/transl.fl)