Brussels, 11/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - The International Road Transport Union (IRU) has criticised the vote by the European Parliament which, on Tuesday 5 May, rejected the proposal for a directive revising legislation on the working hours of mobile workers in the road transport sector, which among other things provides for self-employed workers to be excluded. In a press release published after the vote, the association calls on Parliament to reconsider the European Commission's proposal, calling on the latter to keep the text in place despite MEPs' opposition. “The European Parliament was wrong to reject this proposal. They should instead try to find a joint solution with the Council (Ed: which, under certain conditions, supported the Commission proposal). It is essential that the Commission asks the newly elected Parliament to reconsider the proposal when it reconvenes in September”, said Georges Causse, who chairs the IRU social affairs committee. He backs the Council's approach, which recommends giving member states more flexibility when it comes to including or excluding genuine self-employed workers from the scope of the directive (see EUROPE 9872). Exclusion of self-employed workers must not prevent certain member states from individually applying this kind of rule to their own operators, the IRU states. It should be noted that the association also rallied to a definition of night work (at least two hours' work during the nationally-defined “night-time” period) and the identification of fake self-employed workers as proposed by the Council. (A.By./transl.jl)