Progress on Working Time Directive - but talks continue

The Czech EU Presidency, negotiating on behalf of the EU Member States, will hold out to the very end and do its utmost to reach agreement with the European Parliament on the wording of the new Working Time Directive.

These were the words of Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Labour and Social Affairs Petr Nečas, who represented the Member States in yet another round of challenging talks, which took place in Strasbourg on Thursday 23 April.

The European institutions have now been trying for almost five years to reach consensus on a new wording of the directive which, among other things, provides for weekly limits on maximum working time and for rules for on-call duty. However, the talks, culminating under the Czech Presidency, were not concluded at today’s meeting and will be resumed at the beginning of next week.

“Today meant a positive step forward. The European Commission submitted another compromise proposal, based on suggestions by the Czech Presidency and the European Parliament. We agreed with the MEPs that this proposal could be a reasonable foundation for a potential compromise,” stated Deputy Prime Minister Nečas.

Next week will show if an accord is indeed possible. Unless the Member States reach an agreement with the European Parliament, the current directive will remain in effect. “The new proposal brings not only better working conditions for employees but also the necessary labour market flexibility,” Nečas said. “It would be ironic if the efforts to protect employees resulted in a failure to reach agreement on the new proposal and thus prolonged the current inferior working conditions.”

The bone of contention is the “opt-out clause”, i.e., the possibility of voluntarily exceeding the weekly working time limit. This exception is currently used by more than half of the EU Member States in sectors with regular use of on-call duty. However, the European Parliament has called for a complete abolishment.