Conciliation talks on working time amendments unsuccessful
The latest round of ‘conciliation’ talks between the European Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the European Commission aimed at reaching an agreement on proposals to amend the Working Time Directive have failed. The principal areas of disagreement are over the future of the working time opt-out and the definition of on-call time.
The likelihood of the working time opt-out remaining in the European Working Time Directive (WTD) has hung in the balance since December 2008 when the European Parliament (EP) rejected the Common Position reached by the European Council of Ministers (ECM) on proposed amendments to the WTD. The EP wants a phased removal of the opt-out by 2012. In addition, it wants all on-call time to count as working time, while the Council wants only active on-call time to count, but not inactive, e.g. when an employee is asleep.
The proposals are now subject to the co-decision procedure and a Conciliation Committee was convened, consisting of delegates from Parliament, the Council and the Commission with a view to reaching agreement on a revised text. The second round of conciliation took place on 1 April 2009 but to no avail. Significant disagreement still remains between the Council and the Parliament on the two issues of the opt-out and the definition of on-call time.
Conciliation will now progress to the final stage and negotiations will reconvene later in April 2009. If no agreement is reached by May 2009, the current proposals for amendment will be scrapped and the European Commission will have to consider whether to introduce new legislative proposals to amend the WTD.
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