Turning up the heat in the fight against social dumping

3 April 2017
Renforcer la lutte contre le dumping social

MEP Helga Stevens has drawn up a list with concrete measures in order to make the fight against social dumping a whole lot more efficient. To this end she is looking in the first place at European Commissioner Marianne Thyssen (CD&V): "She must urgently create a better framework which allows less room for abuse in high-risk sectors, such as construction and cleaning."

"By taking account of the unique features of the various national employment markets you can tackle social dumping more effectively," Helga Stevens notes. For this reason the EU Member States must themselves be able to draw up a division between high-risk sectors, in which the chance of abuse is high, and no-risk sectors. And whereas for the high-risk sectors you have to be able to limit the maximum secondment duration, in the no-risk sectors you don't even need to impose a maximum duration at all. "The free circulation of services is in many ways of enormous economic added value for an open economy like Flanders. The idea is certainly not for us to be limiting it unnecessarily," Helga Stevens emphasises.

Curbing benefit tourism

In addition, the N-VA is advocating curbing European benefit tourism: " Social security Social security is currently managed at the Federal level in Belgium. The most important pillars of Belgian social security are: sickness and invalidity insurance (NIDHI), pensions, unemployment insurance and child allowances. In addition, occupational illness, occupational accidents and annual holidays are dealt with at this level. Some Flemish parties have been campaigning for years for (large parts of) social security to be transferred to the Regions and Communities. Social security tourism undermines social support for the European Union, as the Brexit referendum once again demonstrated. For that reason we need a separate social status for EU newcomers. They must first contribute sufficiently to our social security system before they can benefit from it," Helga Stevens explains. "In addition, we regret that Europe still does not wish to limit the export of child benefit payments. Nevertheless, that would give all Member States the possibility of linking the benefits to the living standard of the Member State in which the child resides. After all, the cost of living varies across Europe."

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