The draft report by Alicia Homs Ginel (S&D, Spanish) on the directive on high-quality traineeships was generally well received by the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee on Tuesday 18 March.
While the MEP has chosen to strengthen the remuneration obligations for trainees, at least to the level set out in the directive on adequate minimum wages, as well as the principle of non-discrimination, by allowing all social groups and more vulnerable groups access to traineeships, the Spanish MEP has also strengthened the assimilation of trainees to real workers and the associated legislation, by complying here with several rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU (see EUROPE 13589/12).
“Internships must be a pathway to employment, not a dead end to job insecurity,” she explained on Tuesday morning, calling on her European Parliament colleagues to establish a framework that strengthens the rights of interns and boosts access to decent jobs.
The rapporteur was followed by shadow rapporteurs from the EPP, Renew Europe, the Greens/EFA and The Left.
For Polish EPP member Jagna Marczułajtis-Walczak, the value of a traineeship depends on its quality, and good conditions, good pay and equal access for all, including people with disabilities, are essential. “These references did not exist in the Commission's initial proposal,” she welcomed.
Slovenia's Irena Joreva (Renew Europe) calls it an “excellent report”. She welcomed the definition of internships as “tools for transition to the labour market” with “clear criteria to prevent abusive practices”. She also welcomed the strengthening of the principle of non-discrimination and access to internships for the most vulnerable.
However, she will be proposing amendments to the effect that internships should be considered as a means of first entry into the labour market and “no longer be used later in a career”, even “when changing career”.
She would also like to strengthen the language on the duty of labour inspectors to monitor and ensure that the burden of reporting abusive practices does not fall on trainees.
For The Left, it is also important to set waiting periods between two internships for companies and to insist on remuneration so that interns are not used to replace employees.
However, PfE and ECR expressed reservations. For Mélanie Disdier (PfE, French), it is the whole legal basis of the proposal that poses a problem. She criticised the rapporteur for having bypassed the treaties and favoured a “labour law angle”, which, in her view, does not correspond to the ‘education’ dimension of the proposal.
“The rapporteur proposes that trainees should be considered as normal workers, so the concept of trainee is removed. No one can be associated with such absurdity,” she raged.
For the Italian member of the ECR group, Chiara Gemma, the Member States must be given room for manoeuvre, and the reference to the directive on adequate minimum wages makes no sense either.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/fzm (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)