Inter-institutional negotiations (trilogues) on the Working Conditions Directive are ongoing in the EU, but still do not seem to be successful on key issues.
On Thursday 17 January, the co-legislators were sitting around the negotiating table for the fifth consecutive time and no agreement was reached, with, on the one hand, a Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU with very limited room for manoeuvre and, on the other, the European Parliament rapporteur, Enrique Calvet Chambon (ALDE, Spain), who, according to several sources, is defending Parliament's position tooth and nail. “It wasn’t a good day”, says one observer.
On the minimum hourly volume below which the Directive would not apply, Parliament and the Council are also stalling (see EUROPE 12169). Parliament does not want it, fearing that a threshold would open a real Pandora’s box to fraud. For its part, the Presidency indicated that it did not have a mandate to go less than 20 hours per month, but possibly less than 4 hours per week.
On a possible definition of ‘workers’ at the European level, as requested by the Commission and the European Parliament, the Council stands by its positions and prefers a reference to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Similarly, on exemptions for civil servants, no agreement has been reached. The Council would be willing to find a compromise to exclude state officials, but not people who work for public services, we are told.
The next trilogue is scheduled for the evening of 28 January. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)