The ETF welcomes the Fair Labour Mobility Package presented yesterday by the European Commission. Mobile and non-EU workers are essential to the fabric of the internal market and the possibility to work in another EU country is an invaluable freedom. However, labour mobility only works in a spirit of fairness and upwards social convergence. In practice, this means labour protections and their enforcement must also extend across the internal market, so far undermined by persisting gaps. The communication and five legislative initiatives presented today propose some much-needed avenues to remedy these shortcomings.
On the Regulation establishing a European Social Security Pass (ESSPASS)
At a first glance, the proposal seems to answer, for now, some of the challenges mobile workers confront with. The ETF welcomes the proposed move from paper based to standardised, digitalised social security documents, starting with the A1 portable document. The introduction of an EU digital wallet will enable mobile workers to have better access and control to their rights. The whole ESSPASS architecture will also benefit enforcement, to a great extent. However, as we pointed out in our contributions in the consultation phase, for transport workers the challenges with social security coordination across the EU are considerable, given the highly mobile nature of transport jobs, and the complex employment schemes involving many jurisdictions. The ESSPASS proposal, while a strong piece in the puzzle, should be doubled by tailored-made rules, better enforcement and better cooperation between Member States, to make a full-fledged difference for transport sectors and its mobile workers. Simplifications brought by the ESSPASS proposal must in no way have a negative impact on enforcement.
On the “Skills Portability Act”
The ETF supports the comparability, portability and recognition of professional qualifications as an essential element to functioning labour markets based on equal opportunities for both EU mobile workers and third country nationals. The ETF will have to analyse attentively the skills-related proposals. Having said that, we reiterate the following:
- Regulated professions must be protected by a principle of non-regression of training standards. Some professions, like many in transport, are strongly regulated for a good reason: they are highly safety-critical. Portability of qualifications must not take place at the expense of high training standards. Likewise, recognition procedures must either be equivalent or mandate additional training.
- Existing sector-specific frameworks must be preserved. They are usually the result of collective agreements, or technical agencies’ binding acts, and reflect sectoral ground realities. This is without prejudice to the possibility of improving the ‘general’ modalities laid out in Directive 2005/36/EC, which ETF supports.
- Facilitating portability should not serve as a means to channel EU and third country nationals into precarious jobs. Labour shortages are mainly due to poor job quality and poor working conditions in certain sectors or professions, rather than due a lack of skills. The ETF opposes instrumentalization of labour mobility and portability of qualifications for the purpose of serving short-sighted labour market policies.
The above stance is equally valid for the EC proposal of a Directive on qualifications of third country nationals.
On the Regulation to strengthen the European Labour Authority
The ETF considers the EC proposal on the revision of the ELA regulation a strong step in the right direction. Here are a few elements of the proposal that will undoubtfully have a key positive impact on ELA’s role in addressing social dumping in transport sectors:
In terms of extending ELA’s coverage, we welcome the EC proposal to allocate more powers to the Authority, to address the problematic situation of third country nationals working in the EU. ELA will be providing more targeted information on employment & social security rights, and its tasks and competences will extend to a number of EU directives that are key in guaranteeing fair employment conditions to third country nationals.
The ETF equally welcomes the EC proposal to enable ELA have a more proactive role in initiating inspections. According to the EC proposal, these will be more extensive in scope, as labour aspects of EU rules pertaining to third country nationals will also be subject to cross-border checks. We equally support the establishment of a pool of seconded National Inspection Liaison Officers to support ELA with its responsibilities. The introduction of requirements for Member States to provide ELA with due justification when not participating in inspections, and of a time limit for providing a justification in this sense, are welcome as they foster clearer procedures, and a mutual understanding of limits and capacities of all parties involved in CJIs, that should be further addressed and overcome, to ultimately encourage better MS participation in CJIs.
Better access and capacity to process information will without a doubt strengthen ELA’s ability to perform operational risk assessments, initiate investigations and target inspection efforts in a better way. We thus in principle agree with ELA having access to platforms such as IMI, the Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information (EESSI), etc., including access to exchanges between Member States concerning concerted and joint inspections. As said above, the ETF will be analysing carefully the impacts of this proposal in due time.
We finally welcome ELA’s proposed capacity to provide grants to organisations offering advice and support to its beneficiaries and we point out that trade union organisations have the competence and expertise needed to assist the Authority in fulfilling its tasks hence they should benefit by this resource.
Last but not least, with regards to the Commission’s intention to prepare, in 2027, a legal proposal to allow fully fledged cross-border telework for startups and scaleups, the ETF believes this sends a worrying signal. Indeed, a dark cloud on an otherwise strong package, a surprise element that piggybacks a package that went through extensive social partner consultation. Our concern is that this will come with forum shopping, social dumping, and circumvention of workers’ rights.
The ETF and its members stand ready to engage with stakeholders and participate in the legislative process. Our guiding principle remains that transport and other mobile workers deserve high standards of protection, information and equal opportunities.
