Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-100"
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"en.20000517.6.3-100"2
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"The text before you, after years of negotiations seeking to define the maximum limits for weekly working hours, is symbolic in more ways than one of the ambiguities and inadequacies of European social policy.
until 2004 there will be no change, there will be no restrictions on working hours;
between 2004 and 2007 the maximum working week will be 58 hours;
between 2007 and 2009 it will be 56 hours;
between 2009 and 2012 it will be 52 hours.
In adopting this text we are sending out a worrying message.
This is the first directive on social matters to be adopted since the Lisbon Summit on employment. I would like to express the hope that the Commission, Parliament and the Council will, at last, take European social policy more seriously. Social Europe will not make progress, nor will it convince our countries’ citizens with proposals such as this.
Firstly, as regards the very principle of a European social policy, the Treaty of Maastricht restricts this to minimum social standards, and only on condition that they do not “hold back small- and medium-sized undertakings”. These restrictions are no longer acceptable today. That, then, is one urgent question to be raised for the forthcoming revision of the Treaty.
Ambiguities and inadequacies are, however, just as evident in the proposal before us. Are we sufficiently aware that, in 1994, when the Member States came to an agreement on the maximum 48-hour working week, they excluded several million workers, such as transport workers, offshore oil rig workers or junior doctors in training?
Mrs Smet’s proposal extends the general rule of 48 hours to some of these sectors. It still does not, however, settle the matter of long-distance road haulage workers and puts forward a frankly ridiculous timescale for implementing the directive with regard to junior doctors!
The position of these doctors in training is similar in many countries: working weeks of 70 and 80 hours in conditions that are occasionally disgraceful and sometimes dangerous to patients. The recent strike by junior doctors in France showed that such a situation was not acceptable, either for the doctors, the patients or the public health service.
But, even though, last November, the European Parliament proposed almost unanimously that the 48-hour rule should come into force within four years, it is now suggested that we alter our position radically. We should adopt the joint proposal of the ministers and the parliamentary delegation allowing Member States up to twelve years (!) before they apply the 48-hour week directive to doctors in training.
Please think about what this means exactly. The first doctors in training to benefit from these conditions have just started secondary school! I do not know of a single other area – the euro, the free movement of persons, goods or capital – where a timescale of this order is tolerated.
In such circumstances, how can we expect the European Union’s social policy to be taken seriously?
Especially as the proposal divides this twelve year period into several distinct periods, each with their own rules for the maximum working week:"@en1
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