Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-11-Speech-1-139"
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"en.20050411.18.1-139"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, first of all I would like to thank Mr Markov for the work that has been done and the compromises that have been found in several problematical areas. Likewise, I would also like to thank you, Commissioner, for your thorough commentary.
The social rights of employees, safe road travel and corporate interests – those are the main aspects which this proposal has dealt with. I do not think, however, that the Committee on Transport and Tourism’s version is now balanced in all these aspects. We know that the new European Union Member States are also, unfortunately, peripheral states, and therefore they are already less competitive in objective terms in the business of road haulage, since they are located far from the most concentrated areas of the market. Unfortunately, the draft contains proposals which further adversely affect opportunities for these road hauliers, such as the extension of the compulsory daily rest period or even the cumulation of such periods; also, the opportunity for drivers to take reduced weekly rest periods outside the depot is being withdrawn and there is a proposal prohibiting the payment of a bonus to hauliers for distance covered even if this does not pose a threat to traffic safety. All these proposals, in my opinion, are designed not to combat so-called ‘wage dumping’, as it is expressed in the justification, or ‘social dumping’, as it is currently known, carried out by businessmen in the new Member States, but in fact in order to preserve the existing division of the market. These concerns regarding drivers’ wages and social protection may lead to drivers from the new Member States avoiding wage dumping overall, because, if they become unemployed, they will not receive any pay at all. Article 11 of the directive currently also lays down a guarantee for participants in a collective agreement between social partners already in force. Builders in Latvia and a few other new Member States, and perhaps now also hauliers, know how ‘easy’ it is to operate in such a situation, if we do not try to balance out interests when we vote for this legislation. I am also not convinced that extending the scope of this legislation to vehicles with a weight under three and a half tonnes if these are operating within a radius exceeding 60 kilometres will help to attain social objectives and traffic safety objectives. This puts an extra financial and technical burden on those vehicles which, according to the statistics, are not the most dangerous. In addition, it will create a reason for express companies to enter into agreements with self-employed drivers, which in turn will worsen social protection for these people and will in fact have only adverse consequences for safety on the roads, too."@en1
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