Strasbourg, 21/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - European Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros has called on the European Commission to deal as rapidly as possible with a complaint about the European working time directive. The complainant, a German doctor, alleges the Commission has failed to respond to his complaint that Germany is infringing the directive. The Commission informed him that it had proposed an amendment to this directive in September 2004. The Ombudsman considers that this does not entitle the Commission to delay indefinitely dealing with the complaint.
In November 2001, the doctor asked the Commission to open infringement proceedings against Germany. He argued that Germany was in breach of the working time directive, in particular in relation to the work of doctors in hospitals and the time spent on call. In the complainant's view, the overloading of doctors and, as a result, their inability to take the minimum periods of rest they need is harmful, not only to their own health, but also to patient care. Since the Commission failed to take action, he turned to the Ombudsman.
If on-call time were to be taken into account for hospital doctors, this would lead to an increase in spending on salaries, something feared by several Member States, including Germany and Greece. In the 2004 Jägger ruling, the EU Court of Justice said that the time spent on call should be considered as working time. In 2004, the Commission, which did not follow up the complaint by the German doctor¸ proposed an amendment to the working time directive, which would have allowed Member States to exclude on-call time from working time for hospital doctors. It then told the complainant that it would examine the complaint in the light of its proposal and of ongoing discussions with other EU institutions. The Ombudsman was of the opinion that the Commission was required to give its response in terms of current law, and could not indefinitely postpone dealing with a complaint while awaiting a hypothetical change in legislation in force. The proposal put forward in 2004 is still at the first reading stage and is unlikely to be implemented in the near future. Consequently, the Ombudsman called on the Commission to deal with the complaint as diligently as possible. The Commission response is expected by 15 December. (The Ombudsman's ruling is to be found at: http: //http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/ recommen/en/053453.htm)
Vladimir Spidla calls on Member States and Parliament to find a solution
Commissioner Vladimir Spidla reacted immediately, but carefully avoided responding to the problem posed by the European Ombudsman. In a press release, he said he was aware of the difficult situation doctors, nurses, fire fighters and other professionals working on-call are in. After recalling that the Commission had proposed an amendment to the 1993 working time directive, he argued for this proposal to be adopted under Finnish Presidency. He added, “Member States have to act now. A compromise can only be found if all sides move. The Commission has put forward a balanced compromise proposal. I therefore urge Member States and the European Parliament to find a solution. It is unacceptable that citizens suffer from the political deadlock. If Ministers cannot agree over the next months, I have no other choice than to take Member States to court on this issue. However, I trust the Finnish Presidency to bring about a solution in the coming weeks”.