Brussels, 04/06/2004 (Agence Europe) - European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein has written a letter to the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister, Elio di Rupo, to seek to calm the debate on the services directive. On the Council table, the directive extends the principle of mutual recognition to all services.
On Thursday, the Walloon government called on the Belgian federal government to take a stance against the directive at the summit on 17 and 18 June. It believes the directive could be in favour of service providers established in Member States that are the most lax as far as social and environmental matters are concerned. It therefore calls for in-depth review of the text to rule out health services, local public services and a number of social services, a press release from the regional government explains.
Several Belgian NGOs and trade unions have also called for a demonstration, on Saturday in Brussels, against this text. Trade unions mainly fear that the directive will allow companies to take on temporary workers from the new Member States without respect for Belgian social conditions in terms of salary and social protection.
Given this debate which is "becoming increasingly emotional", Commissioner Bolkestein felt it was necessary to clarify the intentions of the text in a letter to the Belgian government, his spokesperson said on Friday. Mr Bolkestein mainly said that, for temporary work, it is the 1996 directive on the posting of workers that applies. The directive stipulates that account must be taken of the social conditions of the host country. The Commission also stressed that the services directive will not impose liberalisation of public services but non-discriminatory market access when the market is open to competition, the spokesman's service said.