Un nuevo punto de equilibrio entre la libre prestación de servicios y la protección del trabajador desplazado en el marco de una prestación de servicios transnacional : la modificación de la directiva 96/71/CE por la directiva (UE) 2018/957

Abstract

The protection of workers temporarily posted to another Member State of the European Union or the European Economic Area in order to fulfil their company a transnational services’ provision has never been a peaceful matter. The solution given by Directive 96/71/EC was accompanied, from the very moment that this text has seen the light, more than twenty years ago, of a lively internal and external polemic to the Union. The point at which the directive placed the balance between that protection and the free provision of services has not succeeded in completely satisfying anyone.

There are many voices that have blamed the directive for the establishment of a short, insufficient or unambitious protection, overfolding the demands of the free provision of services and influenced by the purpose of closing the loopholes to the possibility of avoiding the effective application of certain, more advantageous working conditions contained in the rules of police of the host State, open by the then-applicable Rome convention. In spite of having represented, in comparison with the preceding situation, an obvious advance of the protection of the posted workers, this social objective of the directive was overshadowed by which it appeared as its main or predominant objective, which was to prevent the host State from disallowing posted workers from a guardianship that hinders more than is necessary or, if disproportionately preferred, the free provision of services.

Time has come to give reason to those who maintained that protection could have been further carried out without falling into disproportionate constraints of free service provision. It is confirmed by the amendments to Directive 96/71/EC set out by directive (EU) 2018/957. Of these, a good part goes directly to the introduction of a major extension of the substantive protection in question.

The protection that has just been referred to takes on a greater elasticity, mainly because of its diversification according to the type of posting. On the other hand, it is more imperative for the Member States, in the sense that the application of certain contents ceases to be subject to the provisions of the national transposition regulations. The result of the changes is the establishment of a new equilibrium, more favourable for posted workers, between their protection and the free provision of services. Although the diversity of the national labour regulations of the home and host States continues to be respected, the space in which that diversity remained immune to protection is diminishing. The said diminution takes place in the terms explained in Paragraph 3 of this paper.