On Thursday 23 March, MEPs at the Employment and Social Affairs Committee held a first exchange of views on the 500 amendments submitted to the draft report by the two co-rapporteurs, Elisabeth Morin-Chartier (EPP, France) and Agnes Jongerius (S&D, Netherlands), for the revision of the 1996 directive on the posting of workers.
The draft report is broadly based on the initial European Commission proposal that was already the subject of an initial debate in February (see EUROPE 11727). According to Ms Morin-Chartier, on Thursday, 500 amendments submitted is quite a reasonable number, given the importance of the subject. She also considers that the discussion the MEPs have just had about them illustrates that there has been “a change of mind” that appears to suggest they may be more in favour of reaching a compromise.
The highest number of amendments submitted came from the EPP group (169). The S&D submitted around 100, while the ECR, ALDE and the GUE/NGL each drafted 50 of them. The Greens/EFA limited themselves to submitting around 20 amendments. Many amendments (70) exclusively dealt with the question of the duration of posting and the proposals in this regard were very disparate in nature, ranging from staying with the present setup to calling for 3, 6 or 24 months. The very wide variety of ideas submitted can also be identified in the amendments relating to the idea put forward by the two rapporteurs to apply collective regional and sectoral agreements to posted workers.
Many MEPs, however, were opposed to the Commission approach for calculating the duration of a posting on the basis of the work provided in a specific workplace (the “cumulative” question). This approach argues that in cases where the replacement by posted workers carrying out the same task in the same place, the cumulative duration of the periods of these workers’ postings should be taken into consideration (with regard to these posted workers) for an effective period of no less than six months. One of the two rapporteurs explained that they would still need to negotiate this question
Minimum wage versus remuneration
With regard to the most difficult question to resolve in the reform, replacing with the notion of a “minimum wage” with “remuneration”, certain MEPs proposed that it should be withdrawn, whilst others wanted to add additional considerations to it (spending on travel, accommodation food). Several MEPs from Central and Eastern Europe, especially those from the EPP group, but with support from some members of the ECR, suggested an intermediary solution by including the notion of a “minimum wage” in the draft report but by adding certain aspects to do with remuneration and bonuses to it.
Speaking on behalf of the ECR, Anthea McIntyre MEP (United Kingdom) repeated her opposition to the revision as proposed by the Commission and highlighted the damaging political (East-West divisions) and economic (shift towards protectionism) consequences.
Speaking on behalf of the ALDE, Martina Dlabajová (Czech Republic) had doubts about the idea of setting out a maximum duration for postings and said that it was “logical” that some countries wanted to preserve the notion of the “minimum wage”. According to the latter, the part of the reform on subcontracting is not sufficiently clear. She also considered that the transport sector in the context of postings should be the subject of specific legislation. On this last point, the Greens have an opposite opinion and support the main outlines of the positions put forward by the two rapporteurs.
Ms Morin-Chartier also highlighted her support for the idea of extending the legal basis of the directive to cover social policy (together with the provision of services). This clashed with the Commission’s opinion, whose representative reminded MEPs that a “dual legal basis” for a directive was “exceptional”. The Commission also considered that a dual legal basis ran the risk of provoking “complicated discussions” and could not be justified with regard to the question of posted workers because the goal of the directive was, above all, to ensure the effective functioning of the internal market. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)