The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced that he wanted to set up a European employment authority by the end of 2018, which guaranteed respect for European Union rules on labour mobility.
On Wednesday 13 September, in an attempt to tackle the extremely difficult issue of posted workers (see EUROPE 11847), the President of the Commission again underlined the cardinal principle of the directive review, namely, equal pay for equal work in the same place. He considers it necessary that union rules on the mobility of labour are implemented “fairly, simply and effectively”. He concludes that they need to create a new European body for inspecting and applying these rules. On this occasion, he also stated that, “there is something absurd about having a banking authority for applying banking rules but no employment authority for ensuring respect for fairness in our single market”.
What will this involve exactly? For the time being, the project is just beginning and the Commission informed us that nothing on the table has yet been clearly defined. The aim would be to enhance all levels of cooperation between the local labour market authorities and particularly improve inspections of cross-border situations.
There would be many different areas of action: introducing a dispute settlement mechanism between the national authorities; pooling mechanisms that are already in place in the cross-border mobility domain and creating a one stop shop for citizens, businesses and the public authorities; tackling abuses and fraud by way of an employment and social law and facilitating the organisation of joint border control action.
To this end, the project will be based on the agencies and bodies already in place, including the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), the European Centre for the Development of Vocational training (Cedefop), the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), the European Training Foundation (ETF), the European Job Mobility Portal (EURES) and the European platform for fighting against undeclared work.
The project is not exactly new. Even as far back as 2013, Michel Barnier the Commissioner for the Single Market, at the time, was examining the possibility of setting up a European agency to ensure respect for the rights of posted workers, according to an article in Reuters, dated 3 December 2013. The Commissioner at the time imagined creating a small investigation body for coordinating and strengthening the work of employment inspectors in the Union.
Mixed response from social partners
Luca Vinsentini, the Secretary-General of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) welcomed the announcement as “interesting”. He added that he hoped that the unions would be fully involved in elaborating the proposal, as well as in the future role of the employment inspectors.
According to the director of social affairs at BusinessEurope, Maxime Cerutti, contacted by EUROPE, it is, nonetheless, important to promote the mobility of workers in Europe and not make it more difficult. The measures for guaranteeing the effective implementation of legislation, which imposes excessive administrative barriers to businesses and mobile workers should be avoided, he explained. Nonetheless, he also explained that it is possible to encourage cooperation and the exchange of good practices between employment inspection organisations. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)