Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-10-Speech-2-045"
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"en.20050510.4.2-045"2
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".
Madam President, I congratulate the rapporteur and all who have helped him in this work.
There are two crucial points in the report: they are the twin proposals to phase out the opt-out, while opening a way to the annual calculation of working time. In that way we will maintain workers' safety while continuing to allow businesses the flexibility they need to thrive in the modern marketplace.
An opt-out from a piece of health and safety legislation is wrong in principle. It needs to end and we need to bring about a proper balance between working and family life. Our leaders pledged to make the European Union the most dynamic, knowledge-based economy in the world, with more and better quality jobs and greater social cohesion. We will not achieve that by opening the door to a universal opt-out. That would be the path to a long-hours, low-pay economy, which is the exact opposite to what we are trying to achieve. If we do not end the opt-out, we should simply repeal the legislation and stop pretending that we want to put in place any sensible minimum standards at all on working time.
I would stress this: people have told me that this has nothing to do with work/life/family balance. It has. In 1996 the European Court of Justice ruled that this is a health and safety directive and that health and safety is about the total social, psychological and physical wellbeing of individuals. Family and working life balance has to do with the social and psychological wellbeing of all workers within the European Union. So let us nail that particular argument."@en1
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