EU Commission To Hold ‘Reality Checks’ With Workers, Says Trade Union Chief

By Thomas Moller-Nielsen

(EurActiv) — The European Commission has promised to hold regular consultations with EU labour representatives, the head of Europe’s largest trade union confederation has said, in an apparent attempt to assuage workers’ fears over Brussels’s increasingly pro-business agenda.

Esther Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, told Euractiv that Commissioner for Economy Valdis Dombrovskis agreed to conduct periodic “workers’ reality checks” where labour groups’ views on key EU initiatives can be aired and discussed.

She added that the commitment, made during a private meeting between Lynch and Dombrovskis on Wednesday, was “vague on details” but could help ease concerns that the Commission’s push to slash red rape will ultimately weaken workers’ rights.

“What I understood from the conversation is that [Dombrovskis] gave a commitment that he will provide a real, genuine opportunity for workers to give their reality check, and that he won’t just listen to the CEOs and their reality check,” said Lynch, whose organisation represents 45 million European workers.

She added that she was “encouraged” by Dombrovskis’s acknowledgement during the meeting that there is “a difference in the reality check that you would hear from a CEO and what you would hear from a worker”.

However, she warned that the consultations cannot be a “one-off” or “box-ticking” exercise, and that the ETUC will “be following up with [Dombrovskis] to get the details of exactly how the commitment that [he] gave to listen to workers” will be “put into practice”.

A spokesperson for Dombrovskis’s cabinet declined to comment. An instruction for Dombrovskis to carry out similar “reality checks” was included in his mission letter from President Ursula von der Leyen.

Lynch’s comments came as Dombrovskis and other senior Commission officials met with EU businesses, NGOs, and trade unions this week to discuss the details of the EU executive’s “Omnibus Simplification” package, set to be released at the end of this month.

The package, which is likely to be the first of several over the coming year, will propose “far-reaching simplification” in a range of areas including sustainable finance and due diligence reporting, according to an official plan unveiled by the Commission last month.

BusinessEurope, an influential lobby group, said following Thursday’s “Simplification Roundtable” that it did not call the “objective” of the EU’s so-called supply chain and corporate sustainability laws “into question” but stressed they should be made “practical and workable for businesses”.