EU Law on Posting of Workers and the Attempt to Revitalize Equal Treatment

Abstract

This article aims to examine to what extent the recent reform of the Posting of Workers Directive (PWD) may represent a proper instrument to correct the well-known pro-market approach adopted by the case law of the CJEU (“Laval quartet”) and favour more worker-friendly interpretations. The revised Directive is analysed under the heading of the equal treatment rule between local worker and posted workers in order to emphasize some critical aspects of the EU law which could reduce the practical impact of that rule, especially in case of long-term postings. The idea is that even though this Directive has also been adopted as a measure of employee protection, it only partially affects the position of the home-state employers wishing to post their employees to the territory of another Member State on a temporary basis. For example, for various reasons, the scope of the equal treatment rule could be curtailed and thus restrictively interpreted by the courts.

Keywords

• eu internal market
• freedom to provide services
• posting of workers
• equal treatment
• social dumping