On Monday 1 December, the EU ministers for employment and social affairs and their representatives discussed the posting of workers from third countries and so-called fair recruitment as well as “introducing a level playing field” for EU companies and workers, as the Vice-President of the Commission, Roxana Mînzatu, put it.
While the Commission is expected to address the issue of posted workers and subcontracting rules in its forthcoming ‘Fair Labour Mobility Package’, the Danish Presidency of the EU Council stated in a discussion note that “posted third-country nationals often face heightened risks of exploitation, social dumping, and inadequate or absent social security coverage, creating downward pressure on the European labour market”.
They are more “vulnerable to abusive practices such as fake postings, breaches of labour law, including salaries below minimum wage, and precarious working conditions. This vulnerability may stem from the fact that their residence permit often depends on their employment and that they were recruited without adherence to fair recruitment standards”.
Yet these workers constitute a growing share of the EU labour force, “often employed in labour-intensive sectors facing structural shortages, such as construction, road freight transport, agriculture and care. Moreover, third-country nationals are increasingly engaged in cross-border postings within the EU”.
The national migration regime of each Member State determines the access of third-country nationals to the labour market of that Member State, but due to the possibility of posting, these national rules and procedures have an impact on the EU labour market as a whole. Approximately 1.5 million posted workers and 4 million postings were reported in 2023 and, on average, one in four posted workers is a third-country national.
In addition, recruitment processes often involve “all kinds of intermediaries, sometimes in long (subcontracting) chains (...) including formal temporary employment agencies or subsidiaries of an undertaking in another Member State. Sometimes these intermediaries turn out to be letterbox companies”.
“Bona fide” companies. The Danish Presidency therefore wanted to explore several avenues, in particular how to address “abusive subcontracting practices while avoiding placing any additional burden on companies that have a record of compliance – the so-called bona fide companies”. One avenue could be the national licensing and regulatory regimes applicable to temporary employment agencies and labour market intermediaries for cross-border operations.
The aim is to establish more systematic cooperation on the grounds for exclusion from contracts, particularly for companies in sectors prone to abuse (construction, agriculture, cleaning), the memo explains. However, it makes no mention of the idea of limiting subcontracting, as called for by the European Parliament, which this week will vote on an own-initiative report on the subject. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)