Countries flash ‘yellow card’ at EU changes to cross-border work rules

Eastern European governments take issue with Commission proposal on employees posted abroad.

STRASBOURG — A group of EU countries claimed Tuesday they had enough support to try to derail a European Commission proposal to ease wage differences between local workers and those sent abroad in the bloc.

According to several European diplomats, the national parliaments of 11 countries, including Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, have enough votes under EU rules to trigger the “yellow card” procedure against the Commission’s revised new text on so-called “posted workers.”

It would be only the third time the yellow card procedure has been used since it was set up under the Treaty of Lisbon. The tool gives parliaments the ability to hold up adoption of draft legislation if they consider it is aimed at something better handled at national or local level. If enough national parliaments choose to use the procedure, the Commission is required to review the text.

In March, the Commission presented a proposed revision of the EU’s 1996 directive on posted workers, who are sent by employers to work temporarily in another country.

Under existing law, these workers are covered by social security rules in their country of origin, which means employers can hire workers for a lower wage in countries where welfare costs are high. But the final draft of the revised directive attempts to clarify employment conditions for posted workers and gives more detail on paying workers the minimum wage in the country to which they are posted. Instead of “minimum wage,” according to the text, workers are entitled to “renumeration necessary for the protection of workers.”

The issue of posted workers has divided the EU between countries such as Germany and France, which was home to 230,000 posted workers in 2014, and Eastern European nations. The former want to reinforce controls and fight abuses including social dumping — in which work is transferred to countries with lower labor costs — while the latter say tougher controls go against EU free movement and competitiveness rules.

“The yellow card procedure gives a very strong signal from national parliaments that the proposed amendment to the Posted Workers Directive should be again carefully analyzed by the European Commission,” Elżbieta Rafalska, Poland’s minister of family, labour and social policy, said in an emailed statement. She added that “the Commission’s proposal hampers the idea of internal market and European competitiveness.”

EU rules set a threshold for triggering the yellow card procedure, requiring that a certain number of national parliaments express “reasoned opinions” on a piece of legislation. Polish diplomats claimed Tuesday that a total of 11 countries and 14 legislative chambers had done so, enough to meet that requirement.

On Monday, Commission spokesman Christian Wigand told reporters that the institution would confirm whether the yellow card threshold had been reached after the deadline at midnight on Tuesday, and would also “assess all opinions received from national parliaments.”

According to the Commission, a yellow card procedure was launched in 2013 against its proposal for a European Public Prosecutor’s Office. But after reviewing the reasoned opinions, the Commission ended up maintaining the proposal.

On Monday, the decision to trigger the yellow card infuriated some EU politicians. “Our legislation on posted workers is old and the salary gap has grown wider,” said Élisabeth Morin-Chartier, a member of the European People’s Party group in the European Parliament and one of the rapporteurs on the posted workers issue. “We must get out of the current situation.”

Gianni Pittella, the leader of the Socialist group, said: “This proposal must neither be weakened nor withdrawn. This is about the thousands of posted workers whose fundamental rights can only be defended by a European solution to this issue.”