Job-vacancies collapse shows damaging impact of EU agency-work directive

Conservative MEPs have highlighted the European Commission’s own figures on job vacancies as powerful evidence that the controversial Temporary Agency Workers Directive is having a damaging effect on job prospects.

East Midlands MEP Emma McClarkin has seized on the publication of the Commission’s latest European Vacancy Monitor, which showed a sudden and dramatic collapse in temporary posts at the very time the directive was being implemented by member states across Europe last autumn.

France, Germany and the Netherlands had previously all seen substantial growth in temporary vacancies, but from a peak in August the numbers suddenly fell by up to one-fifth.

In the UK, where the directive’s impact is moderated by an agreement between employers and unions that individual companies can effectively opt out if management and staff agree, the fall was less severe.

The biggest impact was in France where the number job vacancies held by leading temporary-work agency Randstad fell by more than 20 per cent in two months.

The Commission report seeks to link the collapse to the poor economic climate and companies performing badly.

However, Miss McClarkin said: “They seem to be in denial about the harmful impact of their own policy. They try to blame the economy, but that has been bad since 2008. When you look at the graph of temporary job vacancies, the sharp downturn comes exactly at the point during last autumn when countries were putting the directive into effect.

“The evidence is staring them in the face.”

“The Commission thought the directive would lead to the creation of more permanent jobs, but of course that hasn’t happened either.

“They have shackled growth in the name of social engineering – and in the process destroyed job opportunities for thousands of workers across Europe.

“It is the perfect example of why the right to determine social legislation of this kind needs to be repatriated to the UK at the earliest opportunity.”