Labour mobility is essential for the Metal, Engineering and Technology-based (MET) industries. In a globalised, world cross-border supply and value chains have become the standard.
Barrier-free movement of workers in the Single Mark
Operating cross-border brings important advantages for businesses and workers. Companies become more competitive and workers can go beyond their country of origin and use another range of their (soft) skills. Labour mobility and free movement foster growth of industry and society.
Diverse character of challenges
To achieve free movement of workers and labour mobility, appropriate policies and frameworks need to be in place at European and national level. Abuse that exists must be tackled but only in the areas where things go wrong.
Posting of Workers
A ‘posted worker’ is an employee sent by his or her employer to carry out a service in another EU Member State on a temporary basis. In order for workers to provide services in different Member States, it is of vital importance to have free and frictionless labour mobility and thus have clear and workable legislation in place.
Unfortunately, there currently is a patchwork of national regulations that have to be observed in the case of posting or even short-term employee assignments and business trips to other EU countries. This makes the free movement of workers considerably more difficult and is a disproportionate administrative and unnecessary burden.
We therefore strongly support all initiatives of the European Commission that provide for the possibility of digitization to relieve companies and employees of disproportionate bureaucracy as for example the Commission’s initiative to create an “eDeclaration” in order to standardise and simplify the reporting obligations for postings within the EU.
Social Security Coordination
The EU provides common rules to protect workers’ social security rights when moving within Europe. The Revision of the Social Security Coordination aims at updating and modernising the existing rules and has the overall objective to facilitate labour mobility. This while ensuring fairness for those who move, and for taxpayers.
Many EU based Tech and Industry companies send their employees to countries in the EU for a short period of time in order to provide services related to the goods they produce, such as the installation or repair of these goods. As these short trips within the single market can occur quite frequently but usually only for a limited number of days, we see a real necessity of not only exempting business trips but also activities abroad which last only a limited number of days from the prior notification requirement. Exempting a limited number of days is main importance in order to avoid unnecessary administrative burden.
European Labour Authority (ELA)
The ELA was set up to ensure that EU rules on labour mobility and social security coordination are enforced in a fair and effective way and makes it easier for citizens and businesses to reap the benefits of the internal market.
Ceemet relies on the ELA to support Member States in providing accurate, comprehensible and easily accessible information for employers and workers.