On Wednesday 18 February, the European employers’ organisation BusinessEurope submitted proposed amendments to the European Commission to “deliver the necessary regulatory burden reduction” associated with five pieces of EU social legislation.
These are the Pay Transparency Directive, the Platform Work Directive, the Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive, the Working Time Directive and lastly the REACH regulation on chemicals and its interface with the Occupational Safety and Health Directive.
In a 27-page document, BusinessEurope calls firstly for a moratorium on the transposition of the text on pay and proposes “the introduction of a presumption of compliance for the companies adhering to collective agreements and other concrete amendments to facilitate compliance with this important directive”.
Given that the current deadline for transposition is 7 June 2026, “members of BusinessEurope are urging the co-legislators to grant a two-year extension. This extension would allow Member States and employers time to adapt their systems, procedures and legislation to the requirements of the Directive, thereby ensuring proportionate and effective transposition across the EU”.
“A presumption of compliance should be established in the Pay Transparency Directive (PTD) for companies adhering to collective agreements. Not only would this result in a massive administrative burden reduction in the specific case of the PTD but, it would also constitute an incentive to engage in collective bargaining” throughout the EU.
With regard to platform work, according to the European employers, certain definitions need to be simplified and inconsistencies with other European legislation concerning restrictions on the processing of personal data by algorithmic management systems need to be eliminated.
The note therefore proposes merging the definitions of “automated decision-making system” and “automated monitoring system” into the new definition of “algorithmic management systems”.
With regard to the 2003 Working Time Directive, it should be noted that this directive does not impose an obligation on employers to introduce a system for recording working time for workers whose working hours are not measured or predetermined or can be determined by the workers themselves.
“We also propose extending the reference period for calculating weekly working hours to 12 months in the body of the directive (compared with 4 months at present), in order to provide the necessary flexibility for organising working time and to give social partners more scope to agree on derogations through collective agreements”.
This is particularly important “ in view of the necessity for employers and workers to adapt to change. And in a context of higher restructuring operations, this working time flexibility can be key for retaining employment, on top of the use of short time work schemes when necessary. It is also important to create more space for social partners to derogate by way of collective agreements”, explains BusinessEurope”.
Link to the document: https://aeur.eu/f/ksc (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)