The Ministry of Labour and the labour market organizations recommend that the transition period for labour will not be continued. The matter still requires the decision of the Government and Parliament.

The tripartite working group of the Ministry of Labour proposed on Friday 10 February unanimously that Finland will not, after 1 May 2006, continue the transition period applied to new EU citizens. The final decision regarding transition periods will be made by Parliament to which the Government will submit a report on the issue.

The unanimous contentions of the working group are as follows:

All registration methods concerning EU citizens will be developed with the aim of improving the statistics on the mobility of EU workers. The registration method will be developed in the same connection when the Directive on the mobility and stay of EU citizens in the territory of other member states will be enforced in Finland.

The prerequisites allowed by the Treaties of Accession for the registration of new EU citizens will be clarified and necessary proposals will be made in the section of mobility under the Advisory Board for Labour Policy by the end of March. The registration enhances the possibilities of monitoring labour mobility and supervising terms of employment.

Increasing the supervision of the terms of employment will continue. Additional resources needed in the supervision of the terms of employment will be ensured in situations of subcontracting and hired work. The aim of the preparation is to promote the observation of terms of employment and prevent competitive distortions caused by neglected employer obligations. The aim is also to create preconditions for client enterprises operating in Finland to clarify the observation of acts and terms of employment. The Ulteva 2 working group, which consists of representatives of the Government and the labour market organizations, makes its proposal concerning necessary legislative amendments by 10 March, after which the government bills will be submitted.

In the opinion of the section, it will not be necessary to restrict the admittance of Bulgarian and Romanian citizens to the Finnish labour market along with the EU enlargement on 1 January 2007.

The Minister of Labour, Tarja Filatov, is satisfied with the solution reached. - Finland never introduced any transition period for services, but uses a transition period for labour mobility. This has led to a situation where work has enveloped itself in services. The workers come from the new EU countries as hired workers or independent practitioners. This will lead to a situation where the terms of employment have been difficult to supervise. It would be easier to supervise the labour market, where people have a direct employment relationship with the Finnish employer.

- Abandoning transition periods will not fully remove the market of hired labour. Yet, it will prevent the growing of the problem, Filatov believes.

In Filatov’s opinion, one has to advance in questions related to the supervision of foreign labour. With regard to the supervision, one has to know who in Finland is working, and for this reason registration is important. – By the present method we have no accurate information on how many foreign workers in Finland are working. Supervision is important for the equality of the workers and for the fair competition of enterprises, says Filatov.

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Additional information:

Director Mervi Virtanen, Chairman of the section for international mobility, Ministry of Labour,
Phone + 358 10 60 48020, Mobile +358  50 396 0160
Olli Sorainen, Senior Officer, Ministry of Labour, phone + 358 10 60 48022, Mobile +358 50 396 0162
e-mail: firstname.lastname@mol.fi