WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE : COUNCIL: "UNTIL EVERYTHING IS AGREED, NOTHING IS AGREED".

With the exception Belgium, Hungary, Greece and Spain, the EU's member states want to keep the opt-out, but the Council sees it possible to negotiate with the European Parliament on on-call time and compensatory rest provisions. The Czech EU Presidency has obtained a mandate to start "first informal" three-way talks, on 10 February, on the Working Time Directive's revision, on which the Council and the EP have not yet reached an agreement. This will lead to a conciliation procedure (the third and final phase of the co-legislation procedure), starting on 17 March. Prior to that, three informal trialogues' are scheduled between the EP, the Commission and the Council. All eyes are now on the EP, because Council sources indicate that there is "no clarity" yet on its position.

The Council secured its mandate for informal three-way talks on 6 February. It contains "guidelines" (details have yet to be settled). The mandate sets out that the Council is prepared and willing to negotiate with the EP. However, "both institutions have to make concessions in order to reach a final conclusion". In the document - which is not the ultimate Council mandate since that will only be obtained during one of the Council meetings before 17 March - the Czech Presidency says that it has consulted "with interest" the Commission's opinion, presented on 4 February.

A PACKAGE

The three "crucial" matters - on-call time, compensatory rest and the opt-out - are treated as a package in the Council paper. "Until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed," it says. "These three main issues might be complemented by concessions by both sides on the remaining matters."

Regarding the opt-out, used by 15 member states (allowing the working week to be longer than 48 hours on average, per year), on which the EP adopted nine amendments against the Council's position, the guidelines' say that the negotiations on the EP's amendments were "difficult," because its original position was part of a "fragile political compromise". After "several discussions," there is "no majority" in favour of "phasing out the opt-out within the time-limit proposed by the EP". A majority insists on keeping the horizontal opt-out' "either in its current form or in the stricter form proposed in the common position," while somea member states are willing to accept using the opt-out "only for a certain limited period of time or in certain sectors". The Council "shares" and has taken "due note of" the Commission's...