The negotiation session between the European Parliament and the EU Council on the Work-Life Balance Directive, scheduled for Monday 3 December, was in the end cancelled and replaced by a technical meeting.
The reason would be that the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU would not have had a sufficiently renewed mandate to be able to move forward with the negotiations with the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12146).
The blocking is reported to have come especially from Germany, several sources explained. This Member State does not have paternity leave, but has a very protected parental leave. Thus, the negotiators would work on a wording providing for a derogation status for Germany.
The issue of compensation would continue to displease several Member States. However, for the European Parliament, there can be no agreement on a text that does not provide for any minimum compensation on a directive that introduces minimum standards.
Angry families
The European association COFACE, which represents families’ interests, insisted on Tuesday 4 December on the need to provide "adequate compensation" for all leave (carer’s leave, paternity leave and parental leave).
Contacted by EUROPE, Liz Gosme, director of the association, explained that a minimum adequate compensation would be equivalent to 66% of income, with Parliament proposing 80%. According to her, a consensus would be in sight for paternity leave for a European threshold equivalent to maternity leave. But this is not yet the case for parental leave or carer’s leave, she added.
For Mrs Gosme, insufficiently paid leave, as in France, does not meet the Union's demographic challenges which the extreme right and populist forces surf on, whose mantra is to send women back home, she deplored. The next interinstitutional meeting scheduled for 10 December was cancelled, we are told, in order to allow the Permanent Representatives Committee to renew the negotiating mandate that would be scheduled for 12 December. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)