Organisation of working time: persons performing mobile road transport activities

A tired driver is a dangerous driver. This proposal for a Directive sought to regulate the working time of professional drivers, which includes time spent driving, resting, loading and unloading.

It covers issues relating both to road safety and to health and safety in the workplace.

For Parliament it was important that this legislation should also cover self-employed workers.

Taking place at the beginning of a legislative term, the vote on the Directive was key indicator of the position MEPs would adopt on social and employment policy issues.

The Greens were intent on seeing the Directive cover all road transport drivers, including so-called self-employed workers, because in our view many drivers have been forced to become self-employed, excluding them de facto from working time rules.

Such drivers can therefore drive for as long as they want - or have to, exacerbating the dangers to all road users.

The Greens also fought for a tighter definition of night work and for the stricter enforcement of European legislation at national level.

The Commission's proposal was rejected, so self-employed workers are duly covered and protected by the adopted legislation.

This was a major victory in the first legislative vote of the 2009-2014 legislature and creating fostered hopes that Parliament would become more employee friendly, putting an end to the era of the Bolkestein Directive on services.