Name: Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs Ordinary meeting
Uploaded: 2026-06-23T08:30:00+00:00
Duration: 7235 s

00:00 - 00:46

Speaker 2

tangible gains for citizens, also support for electromobility. So those are measures which in a sense are consistent with our long-term goals, but also have tangible short-term benefits. And finally, on this question on fiscal bracket, indeed, but that's a question we have been assessing horizontally. So how do we treat non-indexation of tax brackets, as we know as the real value of those tax brackets diminishes with inflation. So and in this new framework, indeed, we treat this non-indexation as a discretionary measure, but that's a horizontal approach we use across the board.

Thank you.

00:46 - 00:49

Speaker 1

Thank you, and Executive Vice-President Mizzato.

00:49 - 04:16

Speaker 3

Yes, many thanks. First, about the opening, the Working Time Directive and the firefighters situation. I mean, overall, the Working Time Directive is a crucial piece of legislation of acquis communautaire for our social Europe. And opening this directive is really not an easy thing or a trifle. It has so many important elements there and we're not going at it now like very easily.

That's why I said that of course it is important that we are able to protect all of our Europeans, including firefighters that qualify as workers as well. That's why we look at the flexibilities. I was speaking with my colleagues, we have this continuous exercise engaging with member states on what these flexibilities mean in the context of the legislation of each member state. Do they apply? How much can they apply?

The case law also, how it is interpreted. Is it fully used to the fullest of the possibilities so that we can really help these people before going to legislative modification solution. And I think it's quite important that we first explore, and that's why we talk with member states, the full dimension of flexibilities and case law that we have under the directive as it is before moving towards a more radical proposal, which I again, I say, it's not something that we consider very lightly. We take all elements into consideration. Then on Portugal, we have of course, I was looking here at Portugal's fiche, looking at the challenges, especially on housing, which is very well highlighted.

We have the country-specific CSRs, country-specific recommendations tackling a number of these challenges: housing, low affordability of housing, the situation of long-term care, working conditions. So all the tools that are part of the semester, country reports, CSRs, where the case may be, the social convergence framework analysis, they are all part of the let's say efforts of the Commission to really put or focus the attention on social challenges and indicate where action is needed at national level in those social, in those social challenges. Then on Greece, you know we have the Minimum Wage Directive, which is the most important tool through which we ask our member states where collective bargaining coverage is low to expand it. We've just met the Greek authorities because they signed a national tripartite social agreement.

We've spoken about involvement of trade unions. It is important that we have our social partners real strengthened. We do that also with the help of the ESF in many Member States. We support the strengthening of the capacity of our social partners. So we have a number of EU tools that Member States can use and do use, and we want them to use even more to expand not only the strength of the social dialogue, but also collective bargaining across.

And of course, the example of Greece is of a country that needs to do much more on this path. Much more needs to be done. That's clear. They start from a very low position, but I think they are moving in a direction that indicates commitment to strengthening social dialogue. Thank you.

04:16 - 04:38

Speaker 4

Thank you very much, dear Executive Vice-President, Commissioner. Thank you again for this fruitful discussion, which really shows the importance of these dialogues. For EMPL, I want to remind you that we start in the same room as yesterday for Q1 for our committee meeting. And I will end by giving the floor to my colleague, ECON Chair Aurore Lalucq, for her closing words.