Time up for UK working opt-out?

By Martin Banks

Date: 24/03/05

THE vexed issue of the UK's opt-out from the working time directive will be fought over in the European Parliament next week.

The employment and social affairs committee is to discuss amendments to the directive at its meeting next Thursday (31 March), including a phasing out of the opt-out over the next five-ten years.

The committee will vote on 20 April on a report from the Spanish socialist MEP Alejandro Cercas on Commission proposals to revise the existing rules.

The 202-strong Socialist group, the PES, says it will support moves to end the opt-out clause by 2010.

UK Conservative MEP, Philip Bushill-Matthews, a member of the committee and his party's employment spokesman, said: "I will be pressing the case for the retention of the opt-out. Any attempt to scrap it is unacceptable.

"This is a vital test for the European Parliament. At a time when all attention is focused on the mid-term review of the Lisbon Strategy and the European Commission is committed to more dynamic growth in the EU, it would be madness to scrap what is an excellent arrangement for the UK."

He says British employers and workers should be left to decide on their own working hours.

The British Labour MEPs are expected to vote with their PES colleagues, although Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, has been adamant that the opt-out should be maintained and has been lobbying hard to this effect.

Last week (15 March), the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, telephoned Cercas to convey the message that preserving the opt-out on working time was important to Blair.

Preview of a discussion in the European Parliament's Employment and Social Affairs Committee of amendments to the Working Time Directive at its meeting on 31 March 2005. The items discussed were to include a phasing out of the United Kingdom's opt-out over the next five to ten years. The Committee was to vote on 20 April 2005 on a report from the Spanish socialist MEP Alejandro Cercas on Commission proposals to revise the existing rules.