Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-25-Speech-2-590-000"
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"en.20111025.31.2-590-000"2
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"Madam President, discussion of the possible revision of the Maternity Leave Directive naturally entails the search for a balance between the provisions of European law, national traditions, cultural values, economic realities, social trends and finally, the demographic challenges to which Ms Estrela made reference. So we must not be surprised that the search is not an easy one. Mutual respect is needed as a condition for reaching agreement. The European Commission has its reasons in the proposal it has submitted, the European Parliament has its reasons, and the Council, too, has its reasons when it advances the arguments to which I would like to return in this speech.
Honourable Members, the current directive was intended to improve the safety and health at work, and I quote, ‘of pregnant workers and workers who have recently given birth or are breastfeeding’. It was supposed to establish the minimum level of that protection. Among the amendments tabled by the European Parliament, there are many which have raised doubts among some of the Member States, such as those which talk about provisions on breastfeeding breaks for example, but not only this, because there is also a detailed specification of the number and length of these breaks. Is it hard to understand, with such far-reaching and detailed amendments, that in this situation, doubts have also arisen not only on the part of many Member States, but also on the part of the European Commission, as to whether the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality will be upheld?
Honourable Members, we have legislation in the European Union today which governs minimum European standards on maternity leave. Thanks to the question which has been asked by Parliament, thanks to the opportunity of hearing the ministers’ opinions at the meeting held by the Presidency last week, and in connection with the opportunity of presenting the comments of particular Member States, I am going to have the honour today, on behalf of the Presidency, of hearing your opinions. I know that many of them are going to be critical and harsh opinions, but we have come here so that we can talk about them.
Thank you, too, for what is, in our opinion – in the Presidency’s opinion – the very constructive nature of the questions which have been put to the Polish Presidency. They are questions as regards which you have indicated your readiness to reach a compromise. In the Presidency’s opinion, it will be possible to reach this agreement if account is taken of the differences between measures in place in Member States, the financial and social costs of the changes, and the principle of subsidiarity. However, let us say equally frankly that in view of the challenges being presented by the crisis, but also because of the measures already in place in Member States, in the Presidency’s opinion, the Council cannot accept a 20-week period of fully-paid maternity leave.
During the discussion in Council, some Member States pointed out that their national legislation does, in fact, include provisions on several of the matters raised by the European Parliament, such as breastfeeding breaks, special conditions of work for parents with disabled children and additional maternity leave. However, the generally-held view in the Council is that particular measures, including measures relating to these matters, should be left to the Member States, and it stresses that the trend or direction of these changes, of which I spoke at the outset, is shared both by the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as by the Member States and the Council.
How can we most effectively serve the interests of women in the labour market? Are longer minimum periods of maternity leave and allowances equivalent to full pay the answer to the challenges of the labour market today? It can be stressed again, here, that many of the Member States are moving in this direction, towards such measures. Such measures have been introduced in Poland. However, critics of this solution are pointing to differences in the incomes of working mothers and are asking: why should maternity leave for the highest earners be paid for by the taxpayer? Perhaps the best solution is the one contained in the current directive, which makes the minimum amount of parental allowance equivalent to the amount of allowance which would be paid in the event of sickness and leaves the Member States to specify the upper limit.
You are also asking if the Council will include paternity leave in the revised Maternity Leave Directive. As you know, the Presidency does not have a mandate to present the position of the Council, because a common position has not been adopted, but on the basis of the discussions we have had, I would like to inform you on behalf of the Presidency that, in our opinion, the Member States will not support such a measure, not because they do not appreciate the importance of paternity leave in social policy. Quite the contrary – many of the Member States have already introduced such a measure, and I can say again that Poland is among them. However, the generally held opinion among the Member States and in the Council is that the directive on maternity leave and safety and health at work should not be extended to include paternity leave. Once again, we are not talking about the direction of change, we are not discussing whether paternity leave is an institution which should develop. The Council is showing the direction in which we could proceed.
Honourable Members, I realise that my speech has already exceeded the time limit, but I do want to talk about these decisions openly. I think they concern matters which are so important for the European Union’s citizens that there is no room here for playing or pretending to work. This is why, from the beginning of the Polish Presidency’s work – my thanks are due again to Ms Estrela, who noted this fact – we have attached great importance to the dossier we are talking about today. Please allow me, Madam President, honourable Members, to make a few more remarks, which are a kind of summary of what I have said today and which stress the lack of a formal mandate from the Council and report the state of the discussion in the Council on this subject.
I cannot promise Parliament that agreement will be reached in Council during the Polish Presidency. Whether we are going to continue this work will depend, to a large degree, on your evaluation and on the arguments advanced by the Member States. However, on behalf of the Presidency, I would like here to thank the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council for continuing the process of the search for the best solutions and to promise to conduct further work with the preparatory bodies, particularly if there are visible signs that the Council and Parliament can discuss a realistic compromise at a later stage.
On behalf of the Polish Presidency, I can assure you all that if the progress of today’s discussion gives grounds for thinking that Parliament is ready to negotiate, and therefore – and I say this openly – is also ready to change its current position, then I will immediately and with pleasure pass this good news on to the Council. If, during the Polish Presidency, it were possible to propose further realistic steps towards reaching agreement, it would also be a promising sign for the ensuing work of the Trio Presidency. This is why we are attaching such great importance to today’s debate, and this is why I thank you once again for the opportunity to take part in it. The Polish Presidency is treating this dossier with the greatest care and is fully aware of its significance. We are counting on your support.
I would like today’s debate to bring us closer to agreement, but if this does not happen, then at least I would like our dialogue and clash of arguments not to be wasted, and I would hope that the exchange of views which is taking place fosters the introduction of further measures which are good for parents and their children, and that sooner or later we find, in this complicated world, the best solution to these matters too.
The impression may be that although each of these three institutions has the same objective in mind, it seems as if they are all looking in different directions. The question we asked ourselves at the beginning of the Polish Presidency was, in fact, one about this shared horizon and this shared objective – will it be possible to find this shared horizon and move in the same direction? We want parent-friendly legal regulations which promote a good work-life balance, which engender a sense of security and both encourage and make it possible for those parents who want to invest and who can invest in their career development not to have to worry about the quality of care given to their children.
I think we are agreed as to this statement of the goal of our work, but the dispute concerns the choice to be made as to how to achieve that goal. We are, in fact, talking about which route to take in pursuit of this goal, and not about the goal itself, which appears to be a shared one. It is therefore a dispute about methods, not objectives. The question is: is it possible to reach agreement, and if it is not possible now, then what can we do to achieve this shared goal and this shared vision?
Honourable Members, when we were beginning the work of the Polish Presidency, we knew that negotiations on the Maternity Leave Directive had come to a standstill. Parliament had tabled numerous amendments to the Commission’s proposal, and the Council had not adopted a common position. It still has not taken one today. Furthermore, many of the Member States have questioned the possibility of further work on the directive. When I say this, I wonder if the situation really is so bad and if we can say that the work we have all been doing – the work which the Polish Presidency, too, has done and which we are going to continue to do – has been wasted. There are many reasons why I hope this is not the case. I think that the mechanism for adopting European legislation, which gives powers to the European institutions and defines their mutual relations, has – paradoxically – been effective here. I say paradoxically, because it is thanks to the stalemate in which we have found ourselves and which we are trying to resolve that we have the time to carry out additional analyses which also take account of the dynamically changing situation in Europe and the question of selecting the best solution in the light of these conditions.
Perhaps, if it were not for this mechanism, rashly-taken decisions would have had the opposite effect to the one intended. We have gained time. How will we use it? It is the time we need to make the best possible decision, tailored to the current situation, because this is something we also have to remember. In this European dialogue – I am sorry, because I nearly said ‘dispute’ – in which we are involved, perhaps there will be neither winners nor losers, and may this indeed be the case. So I would like to express my thanks, principally to the Commissioner, Ms Reding, to the rapporteur, Ms Estrela, and to the ministers in the Council who are responsible for the Maternity Leave Directive, for their inspiration, motivation, assessments and analyses which have been, and are, the basis of all that has been done by the Presidency. We have had dozens of discussions and meetings for the specific purpose of working together to weigh up all the arguments and ensure that we do not make the wrong decisions. So I would like to thank everyone who has helped and is helping the Polish Presidency.
Last week, Ms Reding and I held a meeting in Kraków with the ministers responsible for the Maternity Leave Directive. We invited the ministers to join us several days before today’s sitting of Parliament and our debate because we wanted to hear their opinions again; we wanted to ask them to present their arguments and think about the future of possible changes to the directive. In a moment, I will move to the conclusions which came from that meeting. I would like, now, to thank the European Parliament again for its questions. We gave them to the ministers responsible for the directive at the informal meeting in Kraków and beforehand. In the opinion of the Presidency, those questions are the best proof of how concerned you are, honourable Members, for the future of Europe.
Honourable Members, we have watched the directive grow; it has grown up, it is now nearly 20 years old and over those years, it has proved its merits. By using the directive as a basis, or by making use of its provisions, the Member States have introduced legislation to protect working mothers. For the Polish Presidency, the search for answers to demographic challenges, including the promotion of solutions to help people achieve a work-life balance, is and will be a priority. This is why we have not assumed that there is nothing which can now be done in the debate on parental rights. At the informal meeting of ministers, which was held last Friday, we talked about issues relating to maternity leave in the broadest possible context. For it seems that a correct diagnosis of the legal, historical and cultural context may – and I do not doubt this – point the way to possible decisions about how to achieve equal participation in the labour market and how to help people balance their working lives with the rest of their time.
I would like to share with you – and this seems to me to be extremely important – some detailed questions and doubts which have been expressed directly by the ministers of the Member States. Is maternity leave and the level of allowance paid during maternity leave guaranteed by law? Can this question be considered in isolation from the length of other types of leave to which parents are entitled or in isolation from the levels of other allowances to which they are entitled in relation to having children in their care? How does the system of care for young children work? Its influence on people’s ability to reconcile their working and personal life is obvious. Will paying an allowance equivalent to full pay, as Parliament has proposed, serve a better purpose than paying an allowance which is proportionally lower but which is paid for a longer period and not just during the period of maternity leave? Another very important question: in view of the increasingly common tendency for both parents to care for young children and in view of the legal measures already in place in many Member States allowing both parents to benefit from maternity or paternity leave, is it not the case that the changes concerning the extension of maternity leave will hamper those Member States in achieving their objectives? These are, of course, only a selection of the issues discussed by the ministers at our meeting last Friday. It is also indirect testimony to how many different measures are already in place in the European Union. I would like, here, to express my thanks to my fellow ministers that they agreed to this further debate at the request of the Polish Presidency and put forward arguments in justification of their critical stance towards the position of the European Parliament.
Honourable Members, the lack of a common position in the Council is not the result of laziness, neglect or whim. Neither is it – and I would like to stress this – only or even principally the consequence of evaluating the financial effects which adoption of amendments to the directive would entail for many of the Member States, particularly in the form proposed by the European Parliament. The Member States – as we very well know – allocate huge amounts in their budgets to allowances related to the birth and care of children. What is important is that in the view of many Member States, Parliament’s amendments ignore a large number of the measures which are already in place and which are in accord with the directive."@en1
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