Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-434"
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"en.20080422.53.2-434"2
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"Mr President, let me say how much I agree with Mr Brok and how much I disagree with Mr Bushill-Matthews, but I will come to that in a moment. I would like to thank the Commissioner for the recommendation adopted on 3 April. It is an important step in the right direction. I believe that the more effective exchange and access to information and the exchange of best practice will certainly help, but it was one of those strange quirks of timing that the recommendation was adopted on the same day that the Rüffert judgment was handed down. I think the Laval and Rüffert cases in particular require us to go much further than that recommendation now.
Those cases raise the prospect that the economic freedoms can be interpreted as granting undertakings the right to evade or circumvent national, social and employment laws and practices. The only protection, it seems, are the provisions of the posted workers directive. If that is the case, then it is clear that we need to revisit the directive. In particular, we need to clarify the scope for collective agreements, to set mandatory standards, and for collective action to enforce those standards.
I think we need to do a number of things. We need to ensure that host country collective agreements can provide for higher than minimum standards. We need to make mandatory what are currently only options for Member States, such as applying all generally binding collective agreements to posted workers. I think we also need a clear time limit for the definition of a posted worker, so that there is a clear idea of when a posted worker ceases to be a posted worker.
Finally, for now, I think we need to broaden the legal base of the directive to include freedom of movement of workers, as well as the freedom to provide services. That was a proposal which was rejected back in 1996, but I hope we can see now how important it is.
It is the Court that has said that the right to strike and the right of association are fundamental rights, but not as fundamental as the economic freedoms. Trade unions might be forgiven for thinking that they are suddenly living on Animal Farm. We owe it to them to restore a proper balance. I think these modest proposed changes to the posting of workers directive would be a start."@en1
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