Debate: Revision of the European Labour Authority mandate
Date: MONDAY, 15 JANUARY 2024
Speaker: Nicolas Schmit
Language: EN

The European Labour Authority is still a young agency, with high expectations attached to it. Living up to these expectations takes time and might require adjustments. ELA has already come a long way and its actions are making a real difference to ensure EU labour mobility. ELA is here to support, directly and indirectly, the millions of Europeans who live or work in another Member State, as well as businesses operating across EU borders. It offers practical support in cross-border employment via its network, helping jobseekers and employers find each other. It analyses labour mobility, providing us with intelligence, so we understand the latest trends and get the data we need. It tackles undeclared work, which deprives workers of social protection, distorts competition between businesses and leads to huge gaps in public finances. One of the European Labour Authority's main tasks is to improve access to information for mobile workers and their employers. It is not enough to have rules and regulations for social protection; workers need to understand them and employers need to assume responsibility for them. Europe should be the beacon, the gold standard when it comes to labour market conditions, regardless of where the worker comes from. ELA plays a central role in this endeavour. Since it was created five years ago, ELA has supported more than 100 cross-border, joint and concerted inspections and has provided substantial support for the Member States, working to develop cooperation programmes, including on posting of workers. The Commission is currently in the process of evaluating the first five years of ELA's operation. Your resolution is extremely important in this context, together with the contribution from the Belgian Presidency via a conference organised at the end of January, which will contribute to the evaluation. When considering a possible revision of the mandate of ELA, we should take two points into account. First, we have to analyse carefully which parts of ELA's functioning could be improved eventually without such a revision. Second, it is important to see the final results of the evaluation and to draw the adequate conclusions. The mission of ELA is to improve enforcement of the fair mobility EU legislation. This needs to remain at the core while we address remaining challenges. For example, one of these challenges relates to the entry, employment and working conditions of third-country nationals. We recently had particularly worrisome situations with third-country nationals in the transport sector. ELA has been active and here is a need to evaluate if its means are sufficient and appropriate. The set-up of ELA allows a close involvement of social partners, but there is still scope for additional engagement. The suggestion that ELA should be able to bring detected breaches in front of a court of the concerned Member States will require a sound legal analysis. With regard to social security coordination and its digitalisation, a pilot project of the European Social Security Pass is ongoing. The support of ELA in this field will remain crucial, for instance, by facilitating the regular exchange of experiences between national authorities. There should be synergies between the work of different agencies for achieving efficiency gains and avoiding overlaps. This is particularly important when it comes to tackling skills mismatches, since other agencies, such as Cedefop, are also working on this matter. I am confident the European Parliament will continue to be our close partner to tackle these important challenges in the field of fair mobility. I thank the Members for their valuable input into the future of ELA. We share a common goal establishing a well-functioning and efficient labour authority that continues to strengthen fairness and trust in the internal market.