On Friday 31 January, Member State experts resumed their work on the European Directive on quality internships and the fight against regular employment disguised as an internship (see EUROPE 13565/14).
The Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU had submitted a questionnaire to the experts to assess the room for manoeuvre, while a blocking minority had formed under the Hungarian Presidency.
The Polish Presidency focused in particular on the scope, definitions and measures to combat employment relationships disguised as internships.
According to several sources, the meeting revealed an “unchanged persistent division” between those who were able to agree to the Hungarian compromise in December, such as Italy, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia and Denmark, and the others, who are still opposed.
The opposing countries are divided between those, such as Spain, which advocate a more ambitious approach and a broader range of types of internships covered by the text, and countries such as Germany, which feel that the text still goes too far and may overburden companies.
The Commission, for its part, has continued to criticise the weakening of its original proposal, dated March 2024, and is arguing for a broader scope with more internships covered. It also criticised the weakness of the provisions to combat jobs disguised as internships.
According to one source, the majority of delegations that took the floor reiterated their support for a limited scope of application. With regard to definitions, it was suggested that the internships to which the Directive applies should be defined in a positive way rather than by exclusions from the scope, or that the definitions in the Commission’s initial proposal should be combined with those in the attempted political compromise (‘general approach’).
With regard to the list of criteria for identifying bogus internships, several delegations asked for the list of elements indicating what constitutes a genuine internship to be reintroduced into the text, but others suggested that these criteria be retained in a recital.
While they were able to support the Hungarian compromise, the ‘Scandinavian’ countries generally questioned the added value of this Directive and wanted it to have as little impact as possible on existing national systems.
The Polish Presidency should now draw up a new compromise, with a view to a new working group scheduled for 28 February. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)