French Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri and French Secretary of State for Transport Alain Vidalies want transport to be considered in the revision of the directive on the secondment (posting) of workers, something the European Commission wants to avoid.
After a meeting with MEPs in Strasbourg on Tuesday 22 November, the two French politicians told the press that there was a genuine wriggling out of rules in road transport, where posted workers carry out about a quarter of the road transport in France (according to the secretary of state) which is a serous and ever more sophisticated trend. He asked European Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, to consider the idea of a European agency to monitor road transport. He said she had found the idea interesting.
Measures from an EU directive from 1996 and an application directive from 2014 apply to transport but the Commission says there is now a clear need for made-to-measure rules for transport because of its specific legal issues. Hence its refusal to address the question in the targeted review of the 1996 directive unveiled in March that is currently being discussed by the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 11642). The Commission has pledged to unveil specific legislation for transport.
This new proposal is still awaited but the question is becoming a political hot potato, for the French and German governments, which has led to this battle with the Commission. The latter has challenged new French rules that require the French minimum wage to be paid from 1 July 2016 onwards to lorry drivers from outside France. Similar infringement proceedings have been launched against Germany (see EUROPE 11574).
The two French politicians will relay their message to their counterparts at the next meetings of the Council in Brussels on 1 and 8 December. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer with Jan Kordys)