Social Europe is taking a new step forward. On Wednesday 31 July, two emblematic legislative acts of the Juncker Commission in the social field – the Regulation establishing the European Labour Agency (ELA) and the Directive on transparent and predictable working conditions – entered into force.
These are two major texts in the implementation of the European pillar of social rights (see EUROPE 11907/1). The Directive on transparent and predictable working conditions has a particularly wide scope, as it concerns almost 200 million workers in the European Union, as the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Marianne Thyssen, pointed out on that occasion.
The text aims to adapt Directive 91/533/EEC to the current labour market and revises the content of contractual relations between employers and employees, to take into account the rise of atypical contracts, particularly in relation to digital platforms. However, the text does not cover contracts of less than 12 hours per month and provides for a whole series of derogations for certain public bodies (police, military, emergency services), as well as seafarers, nor does it provide a definition for the term ‘worker’ at European level (see EUROPE 12189/4).
The European Labour Agency, for its part, is a new European Union agency, created at the instigation of the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker (see EUROPE 11861/3). The Authority's role is to facilitate worker mobility by strengthening the implementation of European rules and the monitoring of mobile and cross-border workers. It should be noted, however, that following somewhat heated negotiations, joint inspections between two Member States are voluntary (see EUROPE 12194/1). Similarly, Member States will have the choice between turning to the Authority or to the Administrative Commission for the Coordination of Social Security Systems to play a mediation role in the event of a dispute between two Member States.
At the end of the June Employment and Social Policy Council (EPSCO), Member States appointed Bratislava to eventually host the new European Agency, which will have around 140 staff by 2024 (see EUROPE 12274/5).
Coordination of social security systems. These two texts form part of a triptych with the Regulation on the coordination of social security systems, which is currently pending after the Member States' successive rejection of the Interinstitutional Agreement (see EUROPE 12225/15) and the European Parliament's position at first reading (see EUROPE 12239/2). Nevertheless, Commissioner Thyssen is not losing hope of obtaining an agreement before the end of her mandate (see EUROPE 12252/1). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)