Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-15-Speech-4-162"
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".
I should like to express my thanks once again, for the broad support for the proposals. This might well be a Pyrrhic victory, but we shall have to wait and see. I wanted to raise the following matter. We have here a document on employees’ rights in the event of insolvency, that is to say when a business is no longer able to meet its financial obligations. It is a revision of Council Directive 80/987EEC with a number of improvements on what was in there before. A directive such as this aims to give a minimum level of protection in the event of insolvency.
Almost at the same time that I was appointed rapporteur for this dossier, a group of people turned up from the Sintel company in Spain – a company that was split off from Telefonica, sold by them, in fact. They had been campaigning in Madrid for months because they had not been paid for months. In other words, in addition to what I already knew at the time, this realistic description was sufficient to show me at first-hand how significant this report, concealed behind a mass of insolvency terminology, is. The old document, of course, dates back to 1980. A great deal has changed since then, especially within the labour markets, in terms of types of employees and descriptions of the same, the economy has become more globalised and internationalised, there are more businesses that operate both within a certain country and outside it. In addition, there are still cases where it is unclear which country ought to pay out social security benefits. Of course, there have been a number of procedures for the Court of Justice to deal with, and all these aspects combined have led to the Commission presenting a proposal to change the existing directive. The three main problems at the time were: the concept of insolvency, the placing of a time-limit on the guarantee and, particularly, insolvency cases with a cross-border dimension. I have great admiration for those who have submitted the Commission proposals and who have tabled a few amendments following detailed discussions. These mainly pertain to the new legal basis following the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the clarification of the scope and the possible scrapping of the annexes in which quite a few groups are mentioned which can be excluded or not, as the case may be, the new definition of the term ‘intervention’ and especially the new provisions establishing the guarantee fund that covers cross-border cases. In my view, it is important to revisit what I describe as the scope as a whole, for the question as to which categories could still be exempt is still subject to possible debate, especially in the field of domestic staff and the so-called share fishermen. If I had my way, I would scrap this as a whole, as I have also said during the debate. I think that the Commission would also be in favour of this, but a number of countries provide for exemption provisions, and we do not want to make life too difficult for them. What we do consider important is that the Commission has meanwhile included a number of elements which were already being developed within this labour market, where, for example, part-time workers, workers with a temporary agency employment relationship, or workers with fixed-term contracts, are concerned via existing directives in these intervention directives. Since we are as yet unsure about the implications of this, we have to point out – as have many, as will be clear in a moment – that these days, there are an ever increasing number of categories of self-employed, including the quasi self-employed as they are referred to by some, without staff, with staff who would or would not qualify, and then especially those without staff. Those with staff are, in fact, employers. In addition, we still have categories of home workers – mind the translation in this case – because it literally means those working from home, and this could well be the topic of a number of discussions. In fact, it would also be very useful if some progress were made in the legislative work in line with the discussion in the framework of the social dialogue on modernising labour relations, and that is why we made a number of proposals that are now before you. In this connection, I would therefore ask my fellow MEPs to back amendments which pertain to the self-employed without staff, so as to open the debate with the Council in any case. I should like to point out that what is at issue is a codecision procedure and that we will be entering into negotiations after second reading in order to be able to take a step forward in the field of social security and social policy in Europe."@en1
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