If you want to send your workers to Germany, you have to deal with bureaucratic pitfalls.
(Photo: Imago/Westend61)
Berlin Whether in the construction industry or in industry: Posting workers to other EU countries is part of everyday life for many companies. However, this often involves a great deal of effort.
At least that is the finding of a study commissioned by the Family Business Foundation, which is available exclusively to the Handelsblatt. Accordingly, it is more complicated than necessary to register workers in the host country. The economy is suffering from a “muddle of regulations,” write the authors of the study.
In view of the complex requirements and exceptions, the companies surveyed even speak of a “kind of protectionism”. Effort and costs are enormous hurdles for market access.
The board of directors of the family business foundation, Rainer Kirchdörfer, considers the flexible deployment of workers to be indispensable. “Legislators in the Member States infuse crippling bureaucracy into this dynamic process,” he says. “We now need lean and uniform regulations.”
Of course, the Family Business Foundation has a self-interest in less regulation. But the criticism has been around for a long time – also from other places.
Economy Ministry admits problems
In fact, the posting is a kind of classic bureaucracy. The Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) warns not to overload the economy with bureaucracy when posting employees. The chambers of industry and commerce also refer to high bureaucratic hurdles. Recent surveys with a view to France have shown major challenges in the posting formalities.
The Federal Ministry of Economics also admits problems. The posting rules are “increasingly restricted,” the ministry writes on its website. Many companies complained that it was “easier to send employees to China than to some neighboring European countries”.
The basis of the problems is the EU Posting of Workers Directive – at least the tightened form, which had to be transposed into national law by mid-2020. The basic idea: The same conditions should apply to the posted workers in terms of wages, working hours and safety at work as to the employees in the host country. This is intended to prevent wage and social dumping.
According to the study, the companies need a particularly long time to be posted to France.
(Photo: Getty Images; Per-Anders Pettersson)
In addition, there should be fair competition between companies in the Member States. How many postings there are currently is not recorded across the EU.
The secondment may only last twelve months, with special justification up to 18 months. Shorter business trips must also be registered with the A1 certificate, which in turn is a different process.
Anyone wishing to second employees must first submit an electronic notification in the relevant EU member state. Companies have a hard time struggling with this, shows the study for which the Centers for European Policy Network (CEP) and Prognos AG compared the reporting obligations in Germany, Austria, France and Italy and interviewed companies and experts.
France makes it particularly difficult for companies
According to the analysis, posting workers to France is particularly difficult. For this, a company has to calculate an average of 80 minutes processing time. The processing times for postings to Germany and Austria are 66 minutes, to Italy 71 minutes.
The reason: the states require a wide range of information from the companies, but each time it is different. Austria and France, for example, want to know the sales tax identification number, Italy the employee’s date of birth, and Austria the social security number.
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The language requirements are also an obstacle. Italy, for example, only accepts communications in Italian.
Family businesses in particular are annoyed by unnecessary and costly regulations. Jörg Pohlman, managing partner of the adhesive technology company Lohmann, criticizes: “It costs a lot of time, money and nerves.” The companies are already burdened by the Ukraine war and the energy crisis. “I expect a significant reduction in bureaucracy from governments.”
Little chance of improvement
But quick changes are not in sight: In the coalition agreement, the traffic light coalition promised a “low-bureaucracy implementation” of the German Posted Workers Act.
Nothing concrete has happened so far. On request, the Federal Ministry of Labor stated that it was committed at European level “to the introduction of a Europe-wide uniform electronic access portal for posting notifications under labor law and the simplification of their content-related requirements”.
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