The leaders of Austria, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia said in Salzburg on Wednesday 23 August that they want to reach agreement on review of the posted worker directive in the next two months.
The question of posted workers and social dumping were key in the talks held by the visiting French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Salzburg on Wednesday 23 August during the first stop of his European tour that will include official visits to Romania on Thursday and Bulgaria on Friday. Despite disagreements among countries of central and Eastern Europe in recent months on the review of the posted worker directive, the leaders of Austria, France, Slovakia and the Czech Republic restated their aim of reaching agreement at the Council by 23 October, the date of the next EPSCO Council (employment and social policy).
The French president listed the areas on which he had agreed with the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, the Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, and the Austrian chancellor, Christian Kern. The leaders seem to want to reduce the duration of posting of workers, reduce abuse of letterbox companies, ensure equal pay for equal work as laid down in the draft legislation on the negotiating table and to boost fraud investigations.
Macron hailed genuine progress in moving towards agreement and Fico told the French president he would do all he could to convince Poland and Hungary (members of the Visegrad group).
The meeting follows an initial constructive meeting between the French president and members of the Visegrad group on the fringes of the European Summit in June (see EUROPE 11815).
Earlier in the afternoon, Kern and Macron held a joint press conference where they expressed similar views on the secondment of workers. The Austrian Chancellor talked of Western Europe’s fear of social dumping while the French president talked of the current workings of the posted worker directive betraying the fundamentals of the European spirit. The first version of the directive dates back to 1996.
The revision of the directive had led to a vicious battle at the Council (see EUROPE 11805) and the European Parliament (see EUROPE 11810), due to the great differences between Eastern and Western member states.
In Bucharest, Macron aims to remove a misunderstanding about road transport
The four-way meeting did not touch on social dumping, an issue that has also been the focus of east-west tension in Europe (see EUROPE 11804) following publication of European Commission mobility proposals on 31 May, including measures on the pay of international lorry drivers and cabotage abroad in order to align the rules with those in force in the countries where the lorry drivers work.
This is an important issue in Romania, and was raised in the meeting on Thursday 24 August between Macron and the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis. At a press conference, Macron was keen to remove a misunderstanding, as he put it, explaining that revising the posted worker directive would not in any way prevent Romanian lorry drivers from operating throughout Europe. He added that these negotiations would be separate from the posted worker talks and hoped agreement could be reached to allow fair competition in European transport.
In a letter dated 24 August, the Romanian road transport association, UNTRR, criticised the French position as being based on a protective Europe, saying that France was destroying the dream of the single transport market in its desire to change the rules on posting of transport workers. UNTRR rejects the allegations of social dumping, stating that the French government is taking a neo-protectionist approach. It calls on Iohannis to strongly defend the interests of Romanian transporters. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)