On Monday 6 May, several European trade unions called on the Council of the European Union not to be “blinded” by the “false arguments” put forward by European employers on the revision of the European Works Council (EWC) Directive (see EUROPE 13378/22).
While the Member States could examine the dossier on 5 June to give it a potential green light (a working group meeting was initially scheduled for 24 May, but has not been confirmed), these organisations, including the European Trade Union Confederation, EPSU (public services) and ETF (road transport workers), are calling on them in particular not to believe the argument that EWCs have operated perfectly to date, with employers actually referring to “overwhelming feedback” from the field to this effect.
The Commission’s proposal is based on the conclusion that “there is a lot going wrong with the application” of the current 2009 directive. “Four EWCs out of five are either not consulted at all or consulted far too late, although the basic principle of consultation is that it only makes sense if it is open-ended, i.e. the final decision has not yet been made”, write the unions.
With regard to the consideration in the EU Council, new requests from delegations have reportedly been made to modify the definition of transnational matters on which EWCs are to be consulted, in particular to remove the references to the substantial nature of the impact of the measures envisaged (“the measures envisaged by the management of the Community-scale undertaking or Community-scale group of undertakings can reasonably be regarded as substantially affecting the employees of that undertaking or group, or its establishments, in more than one Member State”), but the Belgian Presidency has apparently not yet decided to respond favourably.
This request is said to come from Spain, among other countries, which fears that the word ‘substantially’, added by the Belgian Presidency, will limit the scope of the directive, to the detriment of employee consultation.
Link to the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/c60 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)