Brussels, 10/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - At the last minute on Tuesday 10 May, member states from Central and Eastern Europe managed to garner enough votes to force the European Commission to reassess its legislative proposal for a targeted review of the 1996 directive on the posting of workers. The Commission had presented this proposal in early March (see EUROPE 11507).
From the time the proposal was put forward, several member states (led by Poland and Romania) decided to try and block it by using the subsidiarity control mechanism established by the Lisbon Treaty (see EUROPE 11534). Under this mechanism, national parliaments can trigger the so-called “yellow-card” procedure by sending reasoned opinions to the Commission within eight weeks on draft legislation that they consider not to be in line with the principle of subsidiarity. In a union of 28 member states, 10 national parliaments are needed to be able to make this move so that a threshold of at least a third of the votes is reached.
Member states had until Tuesday 10 May to garner the sufficient number of votes on this proposal on the posting of workers. Due to the late support they received from the Hungarian and Estonian parliaments, they indeed managed to do this, and these parliaments now join the Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Croatian, Latvian, Lithuania, Polish and Romanian parliaments. The Commission and Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU had hoped to avoid an East-West split which would block the file (see EUROPE 11536).
For those who oppose this targeted review, there is only one option - purely and simply withdrawing the text. We have no constructive proposal to make because we do not want this review, a diplomatic source told EUROPE. What they contest is the very principle at the basis of this proposal - that of equal pay for work of equal value in the same place. In their view, this principle encroaches on the competence of the member states on setting salaries.
The Commission did not at this stage want to expand on its intentions, stating that the yellow-card procedure expired at midnight on Tuesday. Once this deadline has passed, the Commission will assess the opinions sent by the national parliaments and will decide on the route to follow, a Commission spokesperson stated. A Commission source nevertheless thought it important to underline on Tuesday that, in the Commission's view, the principle of subsidiarity was upheld in this proposal.
With the yellow-card procedure now being triggered (for the third time), the Commission is required to reassess its proposal. Based on this reassessment, it can decide to maintain the proposal, amend it, or withdraw it. If it decides to maintain it, the European Parliament and Council will have to assess whether the proposal is in line with the principle of subsidiarity before the end of first reading. If a simple majority of MEPs or 55% of members of the Council believe that the proposal infringes the principle of subsidiarity, its assessment will not be continued.
In the two previous cases of this procedure being triggered, the Commission once withdrew its proposal (Monti II, 2012) and once decided to forge ahead (regulation on establishment of the European prosecutor, 2013), successfully (see EUROPE 11336). (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)
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