Rules on seasonal workers ‘delayed by legal errors’

MEP says talks held up by Commission errors; proposal aims to create faster approval process.

The adoption of legislation to create a European Union-wide regime for the admission and employment of seasonal workers coming from outside the Union has been delayed because of drafting errors by the European Commission, according to the MEP who is leading negotiations on the proposal.

Claude Moraes, a British centre-left MEP, said that legal errors had recently been identified in the initial proposal by the Commission, made in July 2010.

The errors concern the need for those seasonal workers who are being employed for less than three months to obtain, in addition to a work permit, a visa for entering the EU. “It is a bit frustrating because it would have been in committee by now,” he said, referring to the European Parliament’s civil-liberties committee.

The committee was scheduled to provide its position on the proposal next week (20 March), but the vote has now been delayed until April or May.

The vote, a so-called orientation vote, serves as a mandate for Moraes, as the MEP in charge of shepherding the proposal through the Parliament, to begin formal negotiations with the Council of Ministers and the Commission.

Moraes has been holding informal talks with national governments and the Commission for some time and said that despite the sensitivity of the draft, “there has been a lot of progress and we have got to quite a good situation with it”.

“I expected more Council resistance than we have had,” he said.

Accelerated system

The proposal is supposed to create an accelerated approval procedure for non-EU citizens for seasonal employment of up to six months in a calendar year if they have a contract or binding job offer. It defines seasonal work and sets out the conditions under which workers are to be granted residency and work permits, as well as the rights associated with their status. It streamlines the approval procedures across member states.

The EU has hitherto regulated the entry of skilled workers and of asylum-seekers, while the rules for seasonal workers – primarily employed in the tourism, agriculture and horticulture sectors – vary widely between member states.

Moraes has been seeking to strengthen the social-protection provisions of the draft directive, and the orientation vote will provide a clearer picture of how much of that protection is acceptable to centre-right MEPs in the European Parliament.

He said that the proposal “does not create new legal routes for seasonal workers to enter the EU” because that would “provoke resistance”. For that reason, Moraes has dropped a demand that illegal migrants currently in the EU be given the opportunity to regularise their status by applying for seasonal-work permits.

Both the Parliament and the Council are seeking to strike a first-reading agreement on the final version of the draft directive.