Mr President, we are now descending to the level of a more everyday problem, namely the regulation of domestic work performed by third parties in private families, for that is the subject under discussion. The problem is that millions of people, particularly women, undertake this type of work, and there is a huge demand for it, but it is not subject to any regulations whatsoever. It would appear, from the limited amount of information available, to be a very extensive sector. I have therefore tried to establish, in various countries, but also at European level, how many people – insofar as this can be established, because the people concerned are often working ‘on the black’ of course – work in this sector. There are many millions of them. I have sought in vain at European level for an all-encompassing study that could give us an idea of the scale of the sector and the problems within it, the regulations – however incomplete they may be – in the European countries, the pilot projects, and any experiments that may have been instigated by the left or right, but I have to say that there was nothing to be found in the Commission. Hence my first suggestion to the Commission: set up an inquiry, get the funding for this – assuming it is needed – from the funding for women’s studies, for example, because this issue mainly concerns women after all, or get it from the funding for poverty studies because it is often poor women that do this type of work. So I think both sources of funding should be considered, with a view to carrying out a comprehensive study of the issue and to finding out what kind of initiatives people are trying to get off the ground in particular countries. That was my first specific question. Secondly, if it is our intention to regulate the sector, then naturally we need to investigate a number of aspects. The first aspect concerns the reconciliation of supply and demand. It is not just the case that the demand for domestic help is on the increase whilst the supply of willing applicants is dwindling. After all, who wants to work in a sector when you know it has to be done ‘on the black’, and without social security, etc., etc. In addition, there is nowhere at all where supply and demand can be matched. So that is one aspect. A second aspect is that the cost to the employer, i.e. the private family that employs domestic help on the regular market, the white market, must not be notably higher than the cost of such labour on the black market, because otherwise it stands to reason that undeclared work will remain the order of the day. A third aspect is that the employee, i.e. the domestic help, must stand to earn more than they would from working ‘on the black’. Fourthly, we need to look into what kind of social statute can be established in this connection. Finally, all this will inevitably involve financial intervention from the government, be it fiscal or parafiscal, because a private family would not be able to afford a full statute, even a limited one, and then they would all carry on taking people from the black market. I believe the best thing to do would be to spur the Member States on to regulate the sector, via the employment guidelines, as has already been called for in Parliament’s opinion on these guidelines. I would therefore like to ask the Commission what efforts it is going to make in future to adapt the employment guidelines, at least in terms of including this service in the section on services, and when does it intend to ask the Member States to start finding a solution to these problems? I now come to my final point, that of migrant women, which is, of course, a very specific problematic area. Many migrant women are here illegally in that they enter on a tourist visa and go back every three months, for example, to the Eastern block countries, to have the visa renewed, and work here as a domestic help in the meantime. In some cases they are exploited and ill-treated. There is no one to help them. They fear that if they were to turn to someone their illegal situation would be exposed. Hence it is imperative that we give special attention to their plight. I have discovered over the past few weeks that there is a great deal of interest, both within international trade union circles and within a number of national trade union organisations. I have had dealings with the Dutch, the Belgians and the Italians over this issue. I would therefore advise the Commission to at least make a start on the search for a solution.

Political group: PPE-DE