ESBA - The Independant Voice for Small Business

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Brussels, 10 May 2005

WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE :

MEPS URGED TO REJECT CERCAS REPORT AND

AVOID DISTRASTROUS VOTE FOR SMEs.

Scrapping the opt-out means less flexibility, less growth and less jobs, and more black economy in the EU.

Members of the European Parliament will vote on the revision of the Working Time Directive (WTD) tomorrow in Strasbourg. The current debate on the WTD is a demonstration that MEPs ignore business reality in the EU, notably that a small (below 50 employees) or a micro business (below 10 employees) cannot be regulated in the same manner global corporations are without dramatic consequences on the EU economy.

Once again, the debate suffers from the absence of a proper “impact assessment”, which should have been carried out before the launch of the proposed revision. Removing the opt-out will not only affect the capacity of small businesses to create jobs, but also lead to more black market economy in all EU Member States.

Whereas all European leaders recently expressed a renewed commitment to the Lisbon agenda, it is incoherent and contradictory to advocate more growth and jobs on one side, and, on the other, deprive small businesses - the driving force for job creation in the EU - of one of their vital tools to do so, namely flexibility.

ESBA was the only small business organisation to propose the extension of the opt-out to small businesses in all EU countries, namely to avoid the extension of the black market economy at the expense of entrepreneurs respecting the rules.

Therefore, ESBA urges MEPs to reject the Cercas report and to ask the European Commission to immediately apply its better regulation objectives to the current proposal.

In order to create more and better jobs, Europe needs more and better entrepreneurs in the first place. All measures taken to discourage them to undertake this will affect the competitiveness of the EU for many years to come and dramatically raise the black market economy.

END

Note to the editor:

ESBA is a non-party political Small business advocacy & benefits European group which gathers member organisations from 22 European countries. It is the only organisation in Europe to focus its representation on (fully) independent small business organisation needs (vs. statutory or compulsory membership groups). ESBA currently represents almost 2 million small business entrepreneurs and represents them through targeted EU advocacy activities. ESBA also works towards the development of strong independent lobby and benefits groups in European countries. ESBA is a member of WASME, the World Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. For more information, please contact: secretariat@esba-europe.org

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