Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-420"
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"en.20080422.53.2-420"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the Commissioner for his statement. There have certainly been many strong reactions to numerous judgements by the Court of Justice in recent times. Some observers feel that, on account of the Laval judgement, among others, the Treaty of Lisbon should be amended and that the Court of Justice should be restrained. I would like to say that this is overshooting the mark and is due to the fact that people on certain sides would like to put a spanner in the works and make people believe that the Treaty of Lisbon could represent a problem for the legal security of employees. On the contrary, the Treaty of Lisbon will mean more rights for employees.
Other observers such as Mrs Van Lancker believe that the Posting of Workers Directive should be amended. Again, I would say no. I do not think that this should be done in the first instance. I believe, like the Commissioner who proposed it, that we should first do some thorough work to see how the Posting of Workers Directive is implemented in practice, and assess the possibilities for safeguarding against social dumping within the framework of the applicable legislation.
I also think that we should await the reaction of the Member States. In this connection I am perhaps particularly thinking about the Laval case. The final judgement has not been reached in the Laval case in Sweden, and there are many aspects to this judgement – both the obvious discrimination against foreign enterprises, which we cannot support, and also the unclear information given to the enterprise. In Denmark a working committee has been set up by the government, consisting of social experts – both legal experts and social partners – to assess how the latest judgement harmonises with the Danish model, which is agreement-based and governed by legislation only to a very limited extent. I think that it would be useful to await the outcome of this committee’s work. It is a fast-working committee and will complete its work by June.
As is often the case in politics, the devil is in the detail, and it is therefore important that we retain a balanced attitude towards these questions. It is only a year and a half since we had a thorough discussion in Parliament of the Posting of Workers Directive and carried out a consultation process with social partners. Everyone said that the Directive was good, but difficult to implement in practice. Employees do not know their rights and employers do not know their obligations well enough. Therefore, our conclusion is that there is a need for better information and better cooperation; this is something that you, Commissioner, are now also proposing. We have, for example, also proposed that the Dublin agency be used, which represents both governments and social partners in order to develop good practice in this area. I would very much like to hear what is happening in this area. I can well understand the fear of social dumping; however, I feel that we must deal with this issue wisely. It will take a long time if the Posting of Workers Directive is to be amended, and it is therefore important that we investigate all the possibilities in order to secure the basis for flexible labour markets such as the Danish labour market under the applicable rules. It is a question of ensuring that we can actually have flexible labour markets.
The right to take industrial action will not be threatened by the judgement; however, there should be a balance regarding matters connected with conflicts. I think that it is important to emphasise that the rights of employees will be strengthened by the Treaty of Lisbon and that both social partners and governments must work together irrespective of boundaries in order to make the legislation work better and to operate without friction. This is the way forward!"@en1
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