Working time: FPB cautious welcome to EU decision

Forum of Private Business has welcomed the decision by the Finnish EU Presidency not to press ahead with plans to restrict individuals' right to opt-out of the EU Working Time Directive.

Small business lobby group the Forum of Private Business (FPB) has welcomed the decision by the Finnish EU Presidency not to press ahead with plans to restrict individuals' right to opt-out of the EU Working Time Directive.

The FPB, which represents 25,000 small and medium-sized UK businesses, believes that today's decision of the EU's Employment and Social Affairs Council keeps the UK's labour market flexibility intact for the time being.

The organisation's Chief Executive, Nick Goulding, said: "We are glad that UK small firms can continue to make use of the opt-out".

The Finns, who hold the rotating EU Presidency, had drafted a compromise which aimed to break the deadlock over the scrapping of the opt-out.

It would have entailed tighter restrictions on its use and extra requirements for record-keeping.

However, the Presidency only decided not to press ahead after a blocking minority of states said they would not agree to a compromise because it did not impose enough restrictions.

Mr Goulding foresees problems with this: "We hope that the current Finnish Presidency and the upcoming German one do not take this as a mandate to come up with a document imposing even more burdens.

"This draft, although it contained some positive measures, was already unacceptable in the costs it would have imposed.

The Presidency should remember that there were also plenty of member states, who were against this compromise because it would have gone too far in its regulation".

Mr Goulding concluded that the European Commission should now be considering whether there is any need to continue its efforts to remove the opt-out.

"That would be more in step with the EU's aim of becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world," he concluded.

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