Background
The EU Posted Workers Directives (PWD) were introduced by the European Union to protect employment rights for mobile employees crossing European Union borders. Once implemented into local law in each Member State, the Directives outline the employment requirements that organisations should meet when posting workers to EU Member States.
The underlying goal of the Directive is to avoid “social dumping” by placing an obligation on employers registered in one EU member state but posting employees to another, to meet the typical employment conditions of the host member state. The Hungarian and Polish governments stipulated that the requirements of the 2018 Posted Worker Directive infringed on the basic EU principles of Freedom of Movement and Services. These cases asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to answer this question. The court has not yet made a final judgment but will give great deference to the opinion of the Advocate General in its decision making.
The need to introduce an update to the requirements
A Posted Workers Directive was introduced to ensure that cross border employers in one Member State sending employees to another Member State temporarily would have to respect the minimum labour law requirements in the host Member State such as:
A significant increase in posted workers combined with little enforcement of the original Directive led to the introduction of an Enforcement Directive and thereafter a revised Directive increasing the requirements that employers had to meet.
Key elements of the new July 2020 update
The key change from the original Directive to the July 2020 update have been to:
