Brussels, 05/10/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 29 September, the European Parliament employment and social affairs committee voted by the narrowest of margins (25 votes to 24) to reject the report by Edith Bauer (EPP, Slovakia) on the draft directive amending directive 2002/15/EC on the organisation of the working time of persons performing mobile road transport activities (see EUROPE 9988). MEPs failed to find agreement on maintaining a single measure that would apply to both employed and self-employed drivers. The text will, then, be sent back to the Parliamentary committee for further debate and amendment over the coming weeks. No timetable has been set, though the coordinator may decide to step in, for the committee vote. The next scheduled meeting of the committee is in Brussels on 5-6 October, and the agenda for that meeting has already been decided. The formal vote on this issue, which was due to be held in the EP plenary session this week, has consequently been postponed to a later sitting, after the employment and social affairs committee has reached its conclusion. The Bauer report called on the Commission to withdraw its proposal (which relates to the effect of excluding self-employed drivers from the scope of the above-mentioned directive) and to engage in discussions with the EP to bring forward a new proposal.
Content of Edith Bauer's draft report
In her draft report, Bauer (1) acknowledged the risk of having drivers falsely claim to be self-employed as a result of differing interpretations of directive 2002/15/EC; (2) defines relations between “false” self-employed drivers and customers as being commercial; (3) linked the definition on night working and allowances for the overall working time, and does not accept that the minimum working time should be set at two hours in line with the provisions of Article 7, paragraph 1 which states that working time for drivers working at night should not exceed 10 hours in any 24-hour period; (4) considers it disproportionate that, to achieve the objectives set the directive, systems for exchanging information have to be put in place; (5) calls for access to information on social legislation in the road transport sector to be made easier and improved.
Reactions to the vote
For the EPP, French MEPs Elizabeth Morin-Chartier, Pascale Gruny and Christine de Veyrac argued against the exclusion of self-employed drivers from the organisation of working time legislation and called for the retention of a single measure applicable to both employed and self-employed drivers. They said that this was the only way to ensure a high level of road safety and avoid any social dumping in this period of crisis for the sector. The three MEPs called for harmonised improvement in road safety and said it was “imperative that the working time directive should allow sufficient rest time to ensure a high level of safety when transporters returned to the road”. They added that “excluding self-employed drivers from the text penalised French transporters and was damaging to French jobs” since, they explained in their press release, “as has already happened in the past, workers from other European countries could declare themselves as self-employed in order to avoid applying working time rules, creating a situation where there was unfair competition with employed drivers”. As a group, the EPP welcomed the outcome of the vote since it will allow a new report to be drafted and “opens the door for reaching a compromise between the European Parliament and the Council on this very important issue”.
On behalf of the ECR (Conservatives and Reformers), Czech MEP Milan Cabrnoch highlighted the efforts of the Commission which had brought forward “a fairly sensible proposal, recognising that the existing laws on self-employed drivers were sufficient, and extending the working time directive would add burdens without tangible safety benefits”. Cabrnoch noted that the “closeness of this vote shows that our group has shown that it can be pivotal in staving off socialist efforts to regulate our industries out of existence”.
For the S&D, UK MEP Steven Hughes was critical of the Parliamentary committee's rejection of a proposal designed to protect self-employed road hauliers from long working hours. Thus, “this committee today has issued a licence to kill. Excluding self-employed drivers from EU law on working time could lead to more deaths and injuries on European roads,” said Hughes, warning that his group would keep up the pressure on the committee to make sure that all drivers across Europe were treated fairly and equally.
The GUE/NGL made similar comments. Thomas Handel (Germany) and Ilda Figueiredo (Portugal) said that the decision would not only lead to long working weeks, but would also be bad for the sector, the profession and the public at large, since its effect on road safety would be negative. It was likely, they claimed, to lead to more deaths and injuries on Europe's roads. The result of the vote was all the more disappointing, they said, since Parliament had decided in May of this year to include self-employed drivers in the European legislation. They would, they said, “keep up pressure for decent working hours for all drivers”.
For the unions, the European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF) said that the vote was a further step towards allowing some categories of drivers to work as much as 86 hours per week, all year long, compromising road safety, bringing more social dumping and further unfair competition in the road transport sector. The ETF notes that this kind of work regime does nothing to attract a young, skilled workforce. It has announced it will be holding an action day against the 86-hour working week in the transport sector in Brussels on Wednesday 7 October. (G.B./transl.rt)