The international project STEP UP – “Stepping up the European cooperation and communication among Public & Private organizations for the PROTECTION of posted worker’s rights”is focused on the phenomenon of transnational posting of workers and aims to verify the application of recent European regulations in the field of labor migration, entrepreneurial behavior and the concrete role played by inspection bodies.
Step Up PROTECTION is managed by universities in 5 European countries and takes place between 2020 and 2020. The project is coordinated by the University of Parma, together with its partners the Portuguese Catholic University (Portugal), the University of Granada (Spain), the University of Vilnius (Lithuania), the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (Romania). Step Up PROTECTION is funded by the Commission European Union (European Union Program for Employment and Social Innovation – “EaSI” – Axis of Progress) in the amount of EUR 547,360.
The idea of the project starts from the recent interventions of the European legislator in the field of transnational posting: interventions aimed at avoiding the low-cost posting of staff in the transnational field, with dangerous forms of competition for posted workers.
The very idea of preventing these strategies is the qualifying point of the system inaugurated by the European directive 67 of 2014 and amended today in an extended way by the European directive 957 of 2018.
The project aims to verify whether and how the meeting between the latest European regulatory strategies and entrepreneurial behavior takes place and what is the concrete role played by inspection bodies. This coordination between companies and inspection bodies committed to ensuring compliance with the new European regulation is therefore the scenario in which the study is inserted, which, starting from a systematic evaluation of the directives and the next regulation, will try to understand how they will be implemented and applied in practice in the different Member States.
The STEP UP project carries out 3 types of actions:
- EVIDENCE: development of joint research
- INFORMATION: new information tools
- COOPERATION: implementation of a training path, addressed to labor inspectorates, social partners
The main objectives are:
- Analysis of the most common breaches of European regulations with regard to the regulations in force today, so that there are projections on the risks of transgression to the new Directive 957 of 2018, which will soon be implemented;
- Analysis of the regulation transposing European Directive 957 of 2018 (currently approved or already adopted), so that, based on the results of the empirical survey, it will be possible to evaluate the solutions or proposals of individual national systems in relation to the objective of to guarantee an adequate level of effectiveness of Community discipline;
- Identify and promote mechanisms and tools to inform employees and employers, both in the country of origin and in the country where the services are provided, of rights and obligations;
- Activation of a transnational training course for competent public authorities and social partners, to illustrate the new rules on transnational posting and the role and functions to be performed by the European Labor Authority;
- Analysis of the overall impact and potential consequences of transgression phenomena and whether they may affect not only the implementation of the European regulation on transnational posting and the achievement of its objectives for the protection of workers, but also competition between companies.