During his visit to the headquarters of the European Commission, on the sidelines of the NATO summit of Thursday 25 May, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, sketched out his vision of a “Europe that protects” through its 'posted workers' directive, to be revised on the basis of the principle of 'equal pay for equal work'.
The initial proposed revision presented by the Commission in March 2016 is an “important start”, but Macron wants Europe to go “further on the control details” and wants the principle of 'equal pay for equal work', with all the underlying conditions and rules applicable to prevent optimisation, to be applied “right to the end”, he said after his meeting with the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. Otherwise, “Europe will be impossible for the citizens to understand”, he stressed, whilst acknowledging that the interests of the countries of central and eastern Europe may not be the same.
Juncker said that it was a “first” for a newly elected President on a visit to Brussels to discuss “social Europe” with him. He pledged that the European institution would not deviate from the trajectory laid down for the revision of Community law in this area, in the name of the fight against 'social dumping' (see EUROPE 11783).
The French President drew a parallel between the need for France to carry out in-depth reforms and for Europe to give meaning back to its project, by doing more to protect the citizens, “in a corner of the world that is no longer understood”. Hence, he argued, the importance of acting in concert at European level on “posted workers, tax convergence, trade reciprocity, defence, asylum law reform”. Macron also said that it was “crucial” to give the Eurozone more ambition by “laying the foundations for greater convergence of our economies and revitalising investment”. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)