Eu’s New Cross‑border Work Rules Favour Recruitment, Not Workers, Say Critics

The EU’s latest efforts to regulate cross-border labour aims to making recruitment for businesses easier, but may not be doing enough to fill in the gaps on worker protection.

As part of its labour mobility scheme, the EU commission has set out plans for more harmonised labour polices, greater enforcement for high working standards, and streamlined cross border diploma verification.

“We are taking a concrete step to really simplify our internal market and make labour mobility fairer for workers,” commission vice-president for work, Roxana Mînzatu, told MEPs in Strasbourg on Tuesday (15 September).

The package attempts to tackle the lengthy administrative processes inherent to transferring workers within the Schengen area, since 14 million EU citizens live in another member states, while another 2m cross into a different member state to work each day.

At its heart is the skills portability act, which Mînzatu called “a real single market of skills” since it enforces the digitalisation of all qualifications into an EU-wide portal to prevent workers from having to translate or post copies of diplomas around the continent, while facilitating document verification. 

The act features an online tool to help compare qualifications across the EU, as well as extending automatic recognition of non-EU qualifications if Brussels has already verified the training institution.

The law aims to increase the number of small businesses which employ workers from another EU country at present, a figure which currently stands at 14 percent compared to 33 percent in larger companies.

Although the act does little to facilitate the recognitions of qualifications from third-countries, the Minzatu pledged “we will create common rules across the EU” in “attracting and making the most of the talent of non-EU nationals.” It currently takes around 14 months to get qualifications recognised from a country like the USA. 

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