The Maltese Presidency of the Council of EU’s draft compromise did not obtain the consensus of member states on the revision of the directive of posted workers, during the Committee of Permanent Representatives to the EU (Coreper) on Wednesday 31 May in Brussels.
In addition to the customary opposition of Eastern European states, France and Germany also dug in their heels on this issue.
The text proposed by the Maltese Presidency is close to that of the European Commission proposal, according to our sources, with regard to application of the rules on local pay for posted workers and the change of status for posted workers after 24 months of work in the same member state. One of the major differences compared to the original text involves the three-year transposition period instead of two years, explained our sources. According to one of our sources, the compromise was much closer to the original text than the one put forward under the Slovakian Presidency.
Unfortunately, the text put forward did not obtain consensus. The countries are now divided into three main groups. Opponents include countries from Central and Eastern Europe: with the exception of Bulgaria – including members of the Visegrad Group (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) and the Baltic states. In substance, they believe that the text is not developed enough and want more work on it. Benelux countries, as well as Denmark, Austria, Slovenia, Cyprus and Sweden, however, were more in favour of the Maltese Presidency’s compromise text. Another group, however, has been formed by France and Germany. These two member states are also opposed to the text and are adopting a much tougher position than that of the Eastern member states.
France has put forward a proposal that has been described by some quarters as “maximalist” and is demanding that lorry drivers are part of the “posted workers” directive’s scope of application. The French delegation has already been defending this position for many months (see EUROPE 11738) but this has been reaffirmed by the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. Germany offered clear support for this position during its speech at Coreper.
The Maltese Presidency was obliged to recognise that consensus had not been obtained. It is now counting on putting forward another text next week. The option envisaged by the Maltese Presidency is, for the time being, rather vague. It would appear that it would like to send the text to the national delegations but without submitting it for the approval of the next Coreper meeting and directly on to the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumers Council (EPSCO) on 15 June. This situation suggests that the negotiations in the future are going to be very difficult.
This looks even more likely given that Mr Macron appears to have made this into one of his priorities in the first hundred days of his presidency. On Wednesday night, several French media sources said that the French Presidency had declared that he wanted to “correct” the directive and announced that the agreement at the Council would be “put back”. During the visit to the European Commission on Thursday 25 May, he unveiled his agenda for a more protectionist Europe (see EUROPE 1197).
Question of legal basis continues to divide European Parliament
The dossier is also stalling at the European Parliament where an east-west geographic division is even persisting within the political groups, particularly with regard to the question of the legal basis. The co-rapporteur Agnes Jongerius (S&D, Netherlands) would like to add article 153 on the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to the base, in an effort to better protect workers.
There is a problem, however. The proposal was rejected by the European Parliament’s legal services in a confidential document, as revealed by EUROPE (see EUROPE 11783).
Nonetheless, the proposal maintains the support of the legal affairs committee (JURI), which was consulted for its opinion. It is true that the rapporteur for the opinion, Jytte Guteland, from Sweden is also a Social Democrat. There was a chance of obtaining a small majority on this point during the vote planned for the meeting on 30 May. An administrative error, however (the text was only provided to the political advisors of the political groups and not to MEPs) meant that it was necessary to postpone the vote to a special session during the plenary session in Strasbourg on Monday 12 June in order to leave opponents the time to initiate debates and affect the vote’s outcome, according to an analysis provided by some MEPs. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)