I also include a table in which you can find the procedural situation after the second reading (for those of you who like to study the technical detail, I include the most recent version of the EP’s guide to its codecision proceedings).

At the moment, the Czech presidency is organising several meetings to check the position of the Council, one of them an informal Council meeting of employment ministers (or their representatives) next week on the 23-rd, prepared today during a dinner of secretaries of state. On the 28-th, a Coreper is planned, where the big question will be on the table if the Council can agree on a mandate for the Cz presidency to enter negotiations.

The EP is already preparing for possible negotiations in so-called ‘conciliation’, and will decide on the composition of their negotiating team next week.

All depends from the willingness of the Council to start negotiations (or not……), as it is very clear that the Council is not ready to accept the EP’s amendments.

In this situation, it is very important to keep the pressure on Member States and Commission. We will do our bit here in Brussels, but it would be very useful if you could write a letter, as the DGB has done (see attached, sorry for the moment only in German) to your Minister of Employment, basically saying something like the following (what follows is a rather free transcription in EN of the DGB letter):

• after a very clear vote of the EP on the working time directive, demanding from the Council to change its position on all key points, the Council is now preparing its position with regard to the EP amendments and a possible Conciliation process
• the position of your government will be very important (or depending on your country: ‘decisive’) to ensure that Council and Parliament will be able to find an acceptable compromise
• the EP has adopted amendments with a convincing and absolute majority which give the clear signal that the Council position on on-call work and opt-out (and other issues, for you to add if you want to draw attention to all our key points such as: reference periods, reconciliation, limitation of exclusion managerial staff, etc.) is unacceptable
• this cannot and should not simply be ignored by the Council
• 15.000 workers from all over Europe have demonstrated in Strasbourg against the Council’s position (or: for changes in the Council position). The vote in the EP shows that the democratically elected representation of European citizens and workers takes their demands for a social Europe seriously (maybe add something on upcoming EP elections etc.)
• we ask you as Minister to do everything within your possibility to convince the Council that it should move towards the position of the EP and be ready to find agreement on the outstanding issues, such as …… etc.
• social Europe needs higher and better standards in the area of working time, instead of diminishing the minimumlevels of protection (you can refer to the fact that the Treaty obliges to improvement of social standards, and does not allow for regression)
• the Council must show (especially now in this period of elections etc.) that also and especially now in this difficult economic period Europe can play an important role to safeguard minimum standards and ensure social progress

Thanks for keeping me informed about the steps you are taking.
(Catelene Passchier, Confederal Secretary ETUC - 14 Jan 09)