two bills for workers’ rights threatened by opposition from several countries, including France

Will two texts of European legislation emblematic of workers’ rights fall by the wayside due to the blocking of certain member countries including France? Failing to find an agreement by Friday March 15, their future is compromised. This is the European directive which must ensure better working conditions for workers on platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo, and the one which aims to impose on companies a duty of vigilance regarding their practices and those of their suppliers in environmental matters. and human rights.

For platform workers, an agreement reached in December with Parliament would have led, according to several capitals including Paris, to the regularization, considered too massive in terms of employees, of millions of Uber drivers and Deliveoo delivery people. The text, greatly watered down since, nevertheless continues to be the subject of very tight negotiations.

Minimal agreements rather than no agreement at all?

The other directive – sometimes nicknamed the Rana Plaza law after the textile factory whose collapse killed more than 1,000 people in Bangladesh – would require large companies to ensure respect for human rights and environmental standards in their non-European factories and with their suppliers. Here too, the negotiations are floundering under pressure from German industrialists who are very dependent on China or Italy and who are opposed to the text. In Parliament, some end up hoping for minimal agreements rather than no agreement at all.

“We will use the review clauses to return to the charge”whispers a parliamentary source from a left-wing group. “These laws, even if weakened, will still be historic”says another source who believes that this will send a strong political signal a few months before the elections.

A question that also arises at the head of the French government on at least one of the two texts, that on platform workers. A change of direction from Paris could indeed swing the vote. Only an agreement by Friday can allow the validation of these texts under this mandate.