Plan against social dumping inadequate

European Commissioner Marianne Thyssen (CD&V) proposed her plans to fight abuse of secondment at the beginning of March. MEP Helga Stevens sees it as a step in the right direction, but thinks it is inadequate to turn the tide in the fight against social dumping.

The number of secondments continues to increase every year. In 2014, there were 460,000 Limosa notifications, used by a foreign employer to report that it seconds employees to Belgium. The number had risen as high as 566,794 in 2015. That means the number of notifications increased by over 100,000 in just one year. That situation is untenable.

Limiting secondment term

Thousands of jobs have been lost in our country over the past few years due to unfair foreign competition. Marianne Thyssen’s plan proposes to give seconded employees the same pay and labour conditions as their colleagues in the country where they are employed. “Marianne Thyssen’s plan is of little help,” Helga Stevens fears. “The underlying problem is 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 , because seconded employees can pay social security contributions in their country of origin for two years. In practice, that makes them significantly cheaper than Belgian employees. That is still unfair. Therefore we call for the secondment term to be limited.”