08 / 11 / 2019
EARTO voices its concerns regarding the Regulations on the Coordination of Social Security (Reg. (EC) 883/2004, Reg. (EC) 987/2009) and the Directives on the posting of workers (96/71/EC, 2014/67/EU, 2018/957/EU). We call on the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to ensure that applications for A1 certificates for business trips should be necessary only when the business trip is longer than two weeks, uniformly throughout the EU. Secondly, we call on the EU institutions to ensure that researchers and science-associated staff are exempted from the general posting of workers regulations, uniformly throughout the EU.
While we appreciate the European Commission’s efforts in reforming the legal framework on the posting of workers in order to ensure the fair exercise of the freedom to provide services and to enhance workers’ protection throughout the European Union, EARTO members expressed great concerns on the implementation of these new EU legislative acts. Generally, Research & Technology Organisations (RTOs) in Europe receive public funding and hence must ensure that the specific legal requirements for employment conditions are met and reported. The legal framework for the posting of workers within the EU was mainly created in order to protect workers in economic/private sectors while the employees of RTOs are mainly researchers and science-associated staff. The latter cannot be equated with “workers” in general. The general labour market for workers differs greatly from the labour market for employees in Higher Education, Research and Technology working for organisations with non-profit public missions. This can clearly be demonstrated, among others, by the creation in 2005 of a European Charter for Researchers which deals with the specific framework conditions for researchers in the EU. It is therefore essential that researchers and science-associated staffs are exempted from the general posting of workers regulations.
We would like to emphasize two key issues:
We call upon the EU Institutions to support the future of mobility of researchers in Europe avoiding creating further mobility’s barriers. We hope that our proposed solutions will be picked up in the negotiations on the revision of Regulation No. 883/2004 as well as in the evaluation processes regarding the Directives on the posting of workers.
EARTO remains at your disposal for any further inputs you may require on those issues.
Read the full EARTO A1 Certificates and the Posting of Workers in EU Regulation