On Wednesday 18 December in Strasbourg, MEPs debated with Roxana Mînzatu, the new Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, the abusive use of subcontracting and the risk of exploitation of workers.
Anticipating the forthcoming revision of the directive on public procurement, in which they want to see greater account taken of social criteria in the awarding of these contracts, the elected representatives have called for a new framework on subcontracting in order to limit the number of players involved in the same production chain.
They also considered it “crucial that the revision of the controversial directive be carried out in a socially responsible manner”, commented The Left MEPs Per Clausen (Danish) and Hanna Gedin (Swedish), who will be the shadow rapporteurs on this dossier for their respective parliamentary committees, in this case the Employment and Social Affairs Committee and the Internal Market Committee.
During the debate, a number of elected representatives highlighted the accidents that have occurred in recent years on building sites in the Member States. In 2023, five people died on a construction site in Stockholm. There were 119 subcontractors on this site, as Hanna Gedin mentioned.
Belgian Socialist Estelle Ceulemans (S&D) recalled the death in 2024 of an undocumented Indian farm worker in Italy and, more recently, the discovery of 134 illegal workers on a building site in Antwerp.
The use of subcontracting “is not a problem in itself”, commented the Belgian MEP, but it “poses a problem when it is aimed solely at reducing costs and worker safety” and also when it “conceals cases of trafficking” in human beings. “We need legislation to limit subcontracting chains to a maximum of two or three players”, she added.
Some MEPs also called for a “blacklist” of European companies that do not respect the rights of subcontracted workers, and for Member States to devote more resources to labour inspection services.
For her part, Roxana Mînzatu highlighted the measures already in place, such as the directive on platform workers, which contains new provisions on intermediaries, and the directive on due diligence.
She reiterated the new Commission’s commitment to defending social dialogue and working conditions throughout the supply chain. The next ‘roadmap’ on quality jobs will be “an opportunity to promote this” and to take into account the challenge of “large, complex supply chains”, said the Vice-President, also citing the challenge of the posting of workers by intermediaries.
Social dialogue and the right to strike. In a previous debate, the elected representatives also expressed concern about the attacks on the right to strike in the Member States and on social dialogue. On this occasion, they reiterated the importance for the Member States to implement the new directive on adequate minimum wages as quickly as possible, which includes raising to 80% the proportion of European workers who must be covered by collective agreements. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)