Background
The collective reference to The Posted Workers Directives (PWD) is effectively three EU Directives. The European legislator utilises the force of EU Directives to set out general principles and aims from an EU perspective, to be implemented specifically in domestic law in order to bring those aims to life.
The first Posted Workers Directive is from 1996 and seeks to protect posted workers’ rights and more accurately their core employment legal rights in the country to which they are posted. Example: An employee from Poland is posted for two months to France to deliver a service. Now, the 1996 Directive provides that this posted worker is entitled to:
These rules were adopted by the European Parliament as a measure to avoid so-called “social dumping”. The European Commission later found that the main issue with the rules was not the aim of the rules, it was the lack of enforcement. Enter the next Posted Workers Directive.
Enforcement
The Posted Workers Enforcement Directive was adopted in 2014 with the exact aim to enforce the rules implemented based on the 1996 Directive. The Enforcement Directive has managed to attract attention from domestic legislator, authorities and especially companies with cross border employees. The infamous implications of the Directive are:
These implications have created a wealth of administrative burdens for companies, however they are not to be disregarded due to the very considerable fine levels that have been introduced and imposed increasingly for non-compliance with these rules.
