Hello and welcome to this first part of six videos on posting of workers. My name is Mijke Houwerzijl. I'm a professor Labor Law at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Posting of workers is a unique intra U phenomenon. To get a first glance of what it's about, let us turn to the website of the European Commission. There, posting of workers is introduced as follows. A posted worker is an employee who is sent by his employer to carry out a service in another EU Member State on a temporary basis. For example, a service provider may win a contract in another country and send his employees there to carry out the contract. Now, this phenomenon originates and is situated most often in the building and infrastructural sector. Think of a construction company established in Portugal, that by posting its own workers carries out a subcontract to build a railway in the Southern part of France. Actually, this was the situation in the famous case, rush Portuguese. The case led to a landmark judgment of the European Court of Justice, establishing that employers are legally entitled, to post their workers on a temporary basis into another EU Member State, to fulfill a service contract. Now, let's turn to the text on the commission's website once again. In line with the rush Portuguese or judgment, it is emphasized that posted workers are different from EU mobile workers in that they remain in the host State temporarily and that they do not integrate into labor market. In contrast, EU mobile citizens go to another member state to seek work and are employed there, they are entitled to equal treatment with national workers and access to employment, working conditions and all other social and tax conditions. So what can we gather from this introduction at the website of the European Commission? First, posting puts companies in the driver seat. They send their employees to another country then where they normally work to fulfill a service contract. Secondly, this implies that the workers have a passive role. Posting is not about individuals seeking work and integrating in the host country's labor markets. Those individual EU workers as we just mentioned, are entitled to full equal treatment with local workers whereas posted workers are not. However, posted workers must be guaranteed the relevant mandatory minimum wage, holidays and rest periods in the host country among some other conditions. Now, behind this rather neutral text, four political issues are hidden and also posting of workers is very complex from a legal perspective. It is at the crossroad of many legal areas. Look at this overview of relevant EU law. As much as five legal areas are related to posting of workers. One, internal market freedoms. Two, private international law. Three, the so-called posting of workers directive. Four, coordination of social security systems and five, regarding road transport. Also specific sectoral regulations. Next to that, and not visible at this slide, six or seven national laws play a role including tax laws and eight sectoral social dialogue between trade unions and employers associations at both national and European level. Also finally, EU public procurement rules can play a role. In this set of video clips, we will zoom in on the Posting of Workers Directive. This is often abbreviated as PWD. We will also touch upon its enforcement directive and on the revised posting directive. Together, these three legal instruments provide the key current and future rules, with regard to the labor standards that have to be guaranteed to posted workers in the host Member State. Please note, that we talk here about directives contrary to regulations such as Rome one and Brussels one and social security coordination regulations. These directives have to be implemented by national law before they get direct effect. Let's take a look at the legal evolution now. The posting directive was adopted in 1996 just before the year 2000 it came into force, then in 2014 the enforcement directive was adopted and mid-2016 the Enforcement Directive came into force. Interestingly, the proposal for a revised posting directive was launched in Spring 2016, so even before the implementation period of the enforcement directive was finished. After a fierce political battle, this revised directive was adopted on 28 June, 2018 and by mid 2020 it will enter into force. Now, in the next knowledge clips, we will discuss the posting directives more in-depth. The following topics will be dealt with especially, political background and aims of the posting directive, material scope, which labor standards must be guaranteed in the host state and then the formal scope or the personal scope which situations of posting are covered by the directive. Then, monitoring and enforcement of the directive and finally to what extent the posting directive applies in the road transport sector. Now, let's wrap things up. We saw that posting of workers is about workers being sent temporarily to another Member State by their employers to fulfill service contracts. With regard to their labor standards during the period of posting, national implementation laws, the posting directive and its enforcement directive must be applied. The revised directive will be applicable from 30 July, 2020 on-wards. To understand the relevance of the posting of workers directive and why in addition the enforcement directive and the revised directives were adopted, we cannot escape the political issues and objectives behind it. That's what we will discuss in the next clip. Thank you for your attention and see you soon.