Brussels, 07/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - “Two weeks before the European Parliament vote on the internal market services directive, the European Commission has sent a vital, irreversible political signal against social dumping by setting salaries and social protection at odds with one another in Europe,” said Roselyne Bachelot (EPP-ED, France), reacting to the opinion from the Commission to the Court of Justice in the Vaxholm case, in which the Commission insists on the strict application of the 1996 Directive 96/71/EC on “posting of workers” (see, among others, EUROPE 9124). The European Parliament feels that the Commission, by supporting Sweden in this case, has confirmed that the free movement of workers will never be at the cost of giving up Member States' social legislation. Free movement responds to the legitimate expectation expressed by the European Confederation of Trade Unions (se EUROPE 9121). Mme Bachelot points out in a press release that, during the debate on the Gebhardt report on the “services” directive, next week in Strasbourg, she intends to argue that the “posting of workers” directive should predominate over liberalisation instruments. Mrs Bachelot points out that the 1996 directive on the posting of workers requires that certain social standards, including with regard to salary, be applied to foreign workers posted to an EU country other than their own. There remained a doubt over whether this principle could oppose collective agreements, writes Mrs Bachelot, explaining that, unlike France, some States do not have a legally set minimum wage, but have wages set by collective agreement negotiated by branch by branch. It was in this grey area that, in 2004, the dispute arose between Swedish unions, defending a collective agreement against a Latvian company and its workers who wanted to negotiate their own agreement with the Swedish employers' organisation but at lower levels of remuneration.