{"id":410316,"date":"2024-12-03T12:03:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T11:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/12\/03\/paesi-ue-stop-tirocini-gratuiti\/"},"modified":"2024-12-06T20:29:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T19:29:52","slug":"eu-countries-still-postpone-the-stop-to-free-internships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/12\/03\/eu-countries-still-postpone-the-stop-to-free-internships\/","title":{"rendered":"EU countries still postpone the stop to free internships"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels –\u00a0The over\u00a04 million young Europeans classified as trainees each year can rest assured: for now, EU\u00a0member states are in no hurry to come to their rescue and end the plague\u00a0of free internships<\/strong>. The 27 member states are not following up on the European Commission’s Mar. 20, 2024<\/a>\u00a0proposal. They are passing the hot potato to the next rotating presidency of the EU Council, which Poland will hold starting in the new year.<\/p>\n

Ministers from EU countries meeting at the Employment and Social Affairs Council in Brussels addressed the issue yesterday (Dec. 2). The 27 member states\u00a0were supposed\u00a0to adopt a common position on the proposal<\/a> of directive put forward by former commissioner Nicolas Schmit that\u00a0would establish\u00a0the general principle that a trainee is equal to a worker, and therefore entitled to be paid<\/strong>, union representation, and social protection. The European Commission, aware of the resistance it could have generated, ruled out imposing a minimum wage for trainees, which would remain up to\u00a0national authorities, which are, however, required to guard\u00a0against the practice of undeclared work and to conduct audits<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

On the table of the 27 member states, the Hungarian rotating presidency of the EU Council presented a\u00a0proposal that overturned the much more ambitious original version of the European Commission. It raised doubts about the role of\u00a0impartial mediator that the country holding\u00a0the six-month rotating presidency\u00a0of the EU\u00a0should play. The European Commission’s newly appointed executive vice president in charge of labor and skills, Roxana Minzatu<\/strong>, spoke out clearly against Budapest’s compromise proposal, saying that\u00a0the text “distorts the initial objectives of the Commission’s proposal.”<\/strong> Among the concerns, the EU commissioner denounced the reduced scope of the directive, which would cover only 22 percent of traineeships.<\/p>\n

It was too little to address\u00a0the 60 percent of European trainees who work for free each year.<\/strong> A blocking minority of countries, led by Spain and Germany, rejected the Hungarian proposal.\u00a0In favor, however, were France and Italy<\/strong>, with the deputy ambassador, Stefano Verrecchia, calling the text proposed by Budapest “clearer and more focused.” Rome’s position was harshly criticized by Mario Furore, a 5-Star Movement MEP, who accused the Meloni government of “turning its back on young people,” pointing out that the draft supported by Italy “removed the obligation of remuneration for all traineeships and reduced the scope of the directive itself, effectively making it an empty shell.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>
European Commission Executive Vice President Roxana Minzatu at a press conference on the sidelines of the EU Employment Council, 02\/12\/24<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Although the Council shares Parliament’s view that this is an important issue, Member States are divided on how best to ensure the protection of interns,<\/strong>” the Hungarian presidency stated.\u00a0 It was the European Parliament, which in June 2023<\/a>, loudly called\u00a0for an end to free internships and gave input to the European Commission to draft the directive.<\/p>\n

According to Budapest, “preparatory talks” among the diplomatic corps of the 27 member states reportedly revealed that the Hungarian proposal was a kind of maximum common denominator, “the maximum that the majority of member states could accept.” It even said that\u00a0some capitals would have wanted “further exemptions,” while, at the same time, other member states “would have wanted a much more detailed and less flexible directive.” Thus, at the end of the debate, the Hungarian Minister of Economy, Marton Nagy<\/strong>, noted the Council’s division over the compromise proposal and deferred the dossier to the upcoming Polish presidency,<\/strong>\u00a0with its “best wishes” to the\u00a0colleagues in Warsaw to succeed in untangling a truly tangled knot.\u00a0Yesterday’s was already the fifth compromise proposal by the Hungarian Council presidency.<\/p>\n

Poland will have to seek a fresh start, beginning from the words of Minzatu.\u00a0“It is essential to ensure that traineeships in the future are aligned in terms of quality with other jobs, and thus that trainees are on an equal footing with other employees,” she warned during a press conference on the sidelines of the EU Employment Council. Meanwhile, work has also begun in the European Parliament. The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) took over the dossier: the rapporteur, Spanish socialist Alicia Homs Ginel, is meeting with stakeholders<\/strong>.\u00a0 European Parliament sources confirmed that the plenary session vote on the position with which to start inter-institutional negotiations would not be before next spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to EU Commission Executive Vice President Roxana Minzatu, the compromise the Hungarian rotating presidency of the EU Council put on the table “distorts the initial objectives of the proposal” of the executive. Italy and France are in favor, but Spain and Germany lead the blocking minority<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":275632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[25752,25841,29884,26307,26444],"class_list":["post-410316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-council-ofeu","tag-directive-internships-en","tag-tirocini-en","tag-work-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410981,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410316\/revisions\/410981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}