Member State experts meeting in the EU Council’s Working Party on Social Questions will meet on Thursday 24 and Friday 25 October to examine new proposals from the Hungarian Presidency of the Council on the Directive and recommendation on quality traineeships.
While many delegations have hitherto been sceptical about the added value of these two texts, particularly the directive, the Hungarian Presidency has slightly reformulated the draft directive in a third compromise, dated 17 October, and in particular excluded from its scope traineeships carried out as part of active labour market policies.
The new text thus stipulates that the provisions of this Directive should apply to trainees in the Union who have a contract of employment or who are in an employment relationship as defined by the law, collective agreements or practices in force in the Member States, taking account of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
“Trainees in vocational education and training, apprenticeships and traineeships in formal education, including those which are a prerequisite for starting formal education or vocational education and training and those which are compulsory for obtaining a diploma or specific qualification, as well as traineeships in active labour market policies, are not covered by the scope of this Directive, due to their specific regulatory frameworks and the specific public interests they pursue”.
This exclusion would further weaken the text in relation to the initial proposal and the European Parliament’s mandate.
The Hungarian text also renames the fight against bogus traineeships (for example, the directive is entitled ‘Directive on improving and enforcing working conditions of trainees and combating practices that disguise employment relationships as traineeships’) and specifies that Chapter III of the Directive concerns employment relationships which are incorrectly labelled as traineeships, i.e. when employers hire trainees outside of an employment relationship usually with a lower level of pay or worse working conditions than those which employees would normally be entitled to.
Other changes proposed in the text include the fact that Member States should ensure the full implementation and application of the rights enshrined in the EU acquis applicable to trainees in the context of an employment relationship. “In particular, Member States should develop the capability of the competent authorities, where appropriate following a risk-based approach”.
And to ensure a more effective level of protection for trainees, workers’ representatives should be able to engage in proceedings and “where such action is admissible pursuant to national law or practice, to act” in order to defend the rights and obligations arising from this Directive, either on behalf or in support of one or several trainees, in accordance with national law or practice. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)