“If the law is adopted in its current form, far from creating a level playing field for service providers and raising standards across EU Member States, it will encourage unfair competition and undermine existing workers’ rights and conditions,” said ETUC General Secretary John Monks. “We do not accept competition for its own sake. It must serve both an economic case and social objective: to improve economic and social performance of companies and countries in Europe. But the economic case has not yet been convincingly made, while the risk for a negative spiral with regard to living and working conditions is real.”

The ETUC notes that IMCO did make some important improvements to the existing draft, for example stating that the objective of the Directive is not to deal with labour law, collective agreements and industrial action, and giving precedence to the provisions of private international law and the Posting Directive. Also it accepted that some Services of General Interest (health, in particular) should be excluded from the scope of the Directive.

However, the ETUC is pressing for further vital changes to the draft.

The ETUC wants:
  Stronger and unambiguous language in the Directive, ensuring that it will not in any way interfere with labour law, collective bargaining and industrial relations in Member States, and explicitly referring to the respect for fundamental rights in this regard, such as the right to take industrial action.
  All cross-border services to be regulated by the law of the country where they are provided or carried out. The country of origin principle (CoOP) cannot be applied before upward harmonisation has been achieved.

  The host country to be entitled to impose supervisory measures on all services - in all sectors - provided on its territory.

  Certain sensitive sectors such as temporary work agencies and private security services to be excluded from the directive and dealt with under separate measures.

  All services of general interest (SGIs), economic or non-economic, to be excluded from the scope of the directive (especially water and social services).

The ETUC will be calling a major European demonstration in Strasbourg to coincide with the vote in plenary.