The EU Council of Ministers has adopted a new Directive to protect EU citizen workers from discrimination when working in another member state.
All EU member states will have two years to implement (transpose) the Directive. Some of the changes that will be introduced in the directive include a requirement for member states to have at least one national organisation which will provide support and legal assistance to EU citizen migrant workers. The Directive will also require states to ensure effective legal protection of workers’ rights. They will also have to ensure that information in more than one EU language is available to EU migrant workers and job seekers.
The right of EU citizens to work in other member states is laid down in Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Currently 3.3% of the EU labour force live and work in another member state. A European Commission press release says that at present, there are a number of difficulties for workers wishing to work in another EU member state. These include a lack of information about their rights in the host state, and difficulties ensuring that migrant workers have the same working conditions as national workers. In addition, employers often have poor knowledge of migrant workers’ rights.
Click here to read an analysis of the Directive on the EU Law Analysis Blog. That blog article says that the purpose of the new Directive is to enforce existing rights available under Article 45 of the TFEU, rather than creating new substantive rights. This means that the Directive is uncontroversial in countries where the free movement principle is politically sensitive, such as the UK. The blog also says that the new Directive is comparable to EU legislation on sex and race equality, but does not provide the same provisions for legal enforcement via the courts – for example, it lacks a general rule on legal aid.