Brussels, 03/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 2 March, the European Commission received clarification from Germany regarding the application of its law on the introduction of a minimum wage. This clarification was long-awaited because Germany wanted more time to respond to a request from the European Commission as part of the EU Pilot procedure.
At the end of January, Germany suspended the application of its minimum wage for road haulage drivers transiting the country (see EUROPE 11243). This suspension had been requested by several member states (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Estonia, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece) (see EUROPE 11237). At the end of February, a diplomat from one of these member states affirmed that it did not want to ignore this question and would wait for the definitive answer from Germany. The diplomat argued that “the Germans are probably the first to have proposed this kind of vision for applying the minimum wage”, which he argued was not “entirely logical and did not respect internal market rules”.
The Commission pointed out that the introduction of a minimum wage was “fully in line with the social policy commitment of this Commission”. The European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF) also published a legal note in favour of applying the German minimum wage. According to the ETF, the directive on posted workers and the Rome 1 regulation effectively requested its application. The note was sent to Commission officials, MEPs from the transport and social affairs committees, as well as German ministers for transport and social affairs. (Jean Comte and Jan Kordys)