Negotiations taking place on Monday 7 December between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU on the regulation on the coordination of social security systems again stumbled over the issue of exemptions from prior notification before posting workers, causing resumption of negotiations to be postponed until next year, under the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU.
We have been informed that the negotiations went on for about 3 hours on Monday afternoon and focused on the issue of prior notification (see EUROPE 12617/33 and 12616/18). The co-legislators are reported to have discussed the option of a three-day horizontal exemption (as opposed to the 10 or even 15 days initially envisaged by the German Presidency of the EU Council), with derogation from the exemption for some sectors (such as construction).
This proposal is reported to have come from the European Commission towards the end of the meeting. “A little too late”, according to a source. The European Parliament is reported to have asked for safeguards. We are told that consideration was given to attaching a reference period to this time-based exemption, in order to avoid fraudulent conduct such as posting workers for multiple short-term assignments in order to benefit from the exemption from the requirement to provide notification.
We are informed that one of the European Parliament’s proposals involves introducing notification within 48 hours of a worker being posted. It is reported that the Council of the EU considered this option too onerous, preferring instead the “burden of proof” approach: the company that has applied for an exemption may be asked by the competent national authorities of the host country to provide proof of social security enrolment (i.e. form A1).
It appears that some members of the European Parliament argued that this solution would not be appropriate, as the workers being monitored only make up a small proportion of the groups of workers being posted abroad. It is reported that the Presidency noted that the Posted Workers Directive already contains a notification mechanism to tackle cases of fraud.
We are told that the other two issues, i.e. exporting frontier workers’ unemployment and defining pluriactivity, were only touched on at the end of the meeting.
It appears that there are no plans for another inter-institutional meeting during the German Presidency of the EU Council, although a new meeting would have been envisaged for Friday 11 December. We are told that there would not then be sufficient time to get agreement from the ambassadors of the Member States at the Committee of Permanent Representatives meeting and to allow delegations to study the agreement.
Consequently, the torch will be passed to the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council, which begins on 1 January 2021. “The hope is that the Portuguese Presidency will pick up where the German Presidency left off”, said one source. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)