The majority of IMCO Committee members rejected the improvements proposed by rapporteur Evelyn Gebhardt, thus taking a step backwards from the line adopted by the EP Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.

The outcome of the IMCO Committee’s vote is not what the ETUC had anticipated. The European trade union movement has demonstrated its willingness to improve this draft directive, but will be taking a tougher stance in the coming weeks if there is no sign of achieving a compromise on the issues of most concern, namely:
  excluding services of general interest, particularly social services and water;
  excluding certain sensitive sectors such as private security and temporary work agencies;
  withdrawal or fundamental modification of the country-of-origin principle. It is not for ideological reasons that the ETUC opposes the country-of-origin principle, but because it sets up unfair competition between service providers, and creates new and unacceptable forms of discrimination that endanger employment in the services sector rather than promoting it.

Nonetheless, the ETUC is satisfied that labour law is to be excluded from the directive. This message reaffirms the position taken by the Employment Committee. In view of the recent declaration by Commissioner McCreevy on the Swedish collective bargaining system, however, the ETUC is remaining on the alert. It calls on Members of the European Parliament to find the best wording possible, in preparation for the vote in plenary in 2006, to reaffirm the exclusion of labour law, including collective bargaining and industrial relations.

The ETUC considers the outcome of the IMCO Committee’s vote totally unacceptable and will maintain its mobilisation aimed at obtaining drastic changes on behalf of all European workers. If the neo-liberal position is confirmed in the EP’s plenary session vote next January or February, the ETUC will abandon its conciliatory approach and will demand the withdrawal of the directive in its entirety.