Brussels, 17/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 14 February, the Greek presidency was given a very strict mandate to negotiate with the European Parliament on the proposal for enforcing Directive (96/71/CE) on the posting of workers. No compromise that would go in a different direction from the political agreement obtained at the Council in December 2013, now appears possible for the two most emblematic articles of the text: Article 9 on national control measures and administrative requirements and Article 12 on legal liability for subcontractors.
The inter-institutional negotiations had already allowed for the provisional closing of two chapters in the implementing directive (see EUROPE 11019) and national ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) have greeted this result rather warmly. Nonetheless, they showed no great flexibility when it came to the points still pending in the negotiations and charged the Greek presidency with strictly following the fragile line advocated by the Council. The positions on Article 9 and particularly Article 12 therefore remain an area of contention between the Council and Parliament (see EUROPE 11004). This also involves part of Article 3 on the elements that help identify a situation involving the posting of workers. The request from parliamentary negotiators to include the problem of bogus self-employed persons in the scope of the text was consequently rejected by Coreper.
Another request was also thrown out, despite it being more anecdotal: a member state must provide 25 working days to another member state or the European Commission in response for any non-urgent information and not 20 days as sought by the Parliament. On another point, a compromise was obtained. Parliament proposed a new paragraph on the Rome I regulation (see EUROPE 11019), despite the Council having barely mentioned it. The compromise may consist in keeping the Parliament's form of words in the main guidelines but only as a preamble.
The next trialogue meeting on Tuesday 18 February will be crucial. Its importance has already been underlined by the fact that Commissioner Laszlo Andor (employment and social affairs) will attend. The Commission indicated that he would be attending because “the discussions will be focusing on the most sensitive points”. Given the Greek Presidency's current mandate, the meeting will be less technical and much more political. It will possibly determine the way in which the entire negotiations go, even if a certain room for manoeuvre will be possible after this meeting. Ultimately, only two possible results appear possible: MEPs either agree to the Council submission on Articles 9 and 12 as it stands or the negotiations flounder and the dossier is kicked into the long grass. (JK/transl.fl)