Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-04-Speech-1-142"
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"en.20090504.19.1-142"2
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"Madam President, honourable Members, you know that road safety is one of the priorities of my work as Commissioner for Transport.
Thirdly, the overall balance between the advantages and disadvantages of extending the rules on working time to the self-employed is very uncertain, and it is not possible to demonstrate that applying the directive in question to self-employed drivers will bring clear advantages. Lastly, it is very important to point out that the application of working time rules to self-employed drivers is ineffectual and very difficult to achieve, since these drivers do not have to record their working time for salary purposes, not to mention the fact that the administrative costs of applying such rules would be very high.
Fourthly, one aspect where intervention is needed, however, is that of ‘false self-employed drivers’, that is to say drivers who are formally self-employed, but in reality are not free to organise their own working activity, because they are entirely dependent on a single company that provides their income and their orders. In social terms, they are vulnerable. Now, in theory, they are covered by the directive, but the failure to apply it means that this does not happen in practice. The Commission’s proposal is therefore to step up the implementation of the directive and provide ‘false’ self-employed drivers with the social protection they need.
At a time of economic crisis, to impose an additional administrative and financial burden on small and fragile businesses, which must face the consequences of the recession, would not send a good message. For this reason, in conclusion, the Commission welcomes the amendments tabled by the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and the Independence and Democracy Group, which are in line with the Council’s common position adopted during the last Transport Council, and, through these amendments, is sending a clear message to the industry: the phenomenon of ‘false’ self-employed drivers will not be tolerated, and legislators will ensure that the rules are applied throughout Europe.
It is also important to emphasise from the outset that, while road safety is of course a key element when discussing an issue such as drivers’ working time, our debate today is not about road safety but about social legislation, not driving time but working time.
The question we must answer today is this: should self-employed contractors be subject to restrictions on working time on the same terms as employees? This is something we must look at very carefully, because there are no precedents in European law establishing how long a self-employed person can work for in an office or laboratory.
In 1998, when the Council and Parliament first debated the directive on the working time of mobile workers, the situation in the road transport sector was totally different from what it is today, as the rapporteur, Mrs Panayotopoulos-Cassiotou, said: at the time it was common practice to dodge the rules in force on driving time, meaning that professional drivers spent far too long at the wheel. On the basis of the previous regulation on driving time, introduced in 1985, it was nigh on impossible to control driving time effectively.
In that context, between 1988 and 2002 legislators discussed a Commission proposal aimed at regulating the working time not only of employee drivers, but also of the self-employed. As a result of that discussion, the sectoral directive on the working time of mobile workers was adopted. The hope was to reduce the negative consequences for road safety arising from inadequate driving time rules by extending the scope of the laws on working time to include self-employed drivers.
The problem was not resolved, however, and following a conciliation procedure between Parliament and the Council, the Commission was invited to weigh up the pros and cons of extending working time rules to self-employed workers and thus present a proposal in 2008. The Commission met this request, publishing a detailed study in 2007 that came to the following conclusions.
Firstly, that working time must not be confused with driving time. As far as the latter is concerned, the situation has changed radically. As you know, this House, together with the Council, has adopted new rules on driving time. Among other things, these rules provide for the use of the digital tachograph, an extremely reliable monitoring device, and a specific implementing directive.
The new rules, which have been in force since 2007, apply to all lorry drivers, thus including self-employed drivers. With the new digital tachograph, which records a lorry’s every move, minute by minute, a driver cannot drive for more than nine hours a day and an average of 45 hours a week. In essence, it is now possible to monitor the application of these rules much more rigorously than it was in 1985.
Secondly, there are no precedents in Community social legislation governing the work of the self-employed. A self-employed worker cannot in fact be forced to do extra hours insofar as he is, by definition, free to organise his own work as he wishes. What is more, it is virtually impossible in practice to control the working time of this group of people."@en1
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