According to a new study, national authorities in the EU are often unnecessarily tightening the bureaucratic requirements from Brussels. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Basel Prognos Institute, the Center for European Politics in Freiburg and the Italian Csil Institute in their published study. The client was the Munich Foundation for Family Businesses.
Using the example of the EU Posting of Workers Directive, the authors analyze how the administrations in Germany, Austria, France and Italy implement the directive. Result: In three of the four countries, the authorities require more information from companies than would be necessary according to the original Brussels version.
The Posting of Workers Directive aims to ensure that workers work under comparable conditions anywhere in the EU. According to the study, France is at the top when it comes to implementing the directive in terms of bureaucracy.
Only Italy implements the Brussels requirement without additional requests
The French authorities are therefore demanding 14 additional pieces of information or documents, which are not even mentioned in the Brussels directive. According to the study, this includes information on working hours, salary, accommodation, VAT number and official expenses, as well as health certificates.
Austria therefore requires nine items of information not mentioned in the EU directive, Germany one. According to the study, only Italy is implementing the Brussels requirement without additional bureaucratic requests. However, according to a study in Germany, employees with salaries of over 2000 euros are often exempt from the requirements.
The authors assume that meeting the requirements in all four countries will require a great deal of time. This means that companies that want to send employees to another EU country first have to find out what information the respective country requires.
The Foundation for Family Businesses, which commissioned the work, complained that the Posting of Workers Directive could actually make life easier for companies that need additional workers instead of making it more difficult. “But the legislators in the member states are pouring crippling bureaucracy into this dynamic process,” criticized board member Rainer Kirchdörfer.