The European Commission has decided to open another file against Spain for not sufficiently protecting public sector workers against the abusive use of successive fixed-term contracts. That is, due to the abuse of the interims. “This is contrary to EU rules (Council Directive 1999/70/EC), which require Member States to introduce, into their national legislation, measures to prevent and, where necessary, punish abuses through successive contracts of fixed-term work”, summarizes the community Executive. It is the second step, with a second letter, after the letter of summons sent a few months ago.
The Commission notes that Spanish legislation does not include such measures for certain types of fixed-term employment relationships in the public sector. For example, regardless of whether an employee with a fixed-term contract was hired for 20 or 30 years, the compensation is the same. And an employee who, after having worked for 20 years under a succession of fixed-term contracts, resigns for any reason, such as taking another job or caring for a family member, will not have access to any compensation, even if a court finds it abusive. that succession of fixed-term contracts. According to the latest data available in the INE, of the almost three million public workers, more than 755,000 have interim civil servant status.
This additional letter of formal notice takes into account the amendments to national rules that Spain adopted after the Commission initiated the infringement procedure in 2015. Brussels considers that the new national rules still do not sufficiently address the problems identifiedparticularly with regard to the effectiveness of sanctioning measures.
Consequently, the Commission sends an additional letter of formal notice to Spain, which now has two months to respond and remedy the deficiencies raised by the Commission. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the Community Executive could decide to issue a reasoned opinion. This is also an entrenched issue for Spain. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled last June in favor of transforming interim officials who accumulate temporary contracts into permanent contracts in fraud of law. A sentence that completely clashed with the doctrine of the Supreme Court.
However, the Government has not yet properly reacted to the procedure opened by Brussels, but Moncloa launched it in 2021 a process of stabilization of interims to reduce temporality in the public sector – which is still close to 30% – and the then Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Function, José Luis Escrivá, said that it gave “extraordinary results”: according to the minister, 75% of the regularizations proposed for this have been fulfilled. year (about 300,000).
Other open files
On the other hand, the European Commission has also decided to take Spain, Cyprus, Poland, and Portugal before the Court of Justice of the European Union for not having notified the measures to transpose into national law the Directive that refers to the benefits of large multinational and national groups or companies with a combined annual turnover of at least 750 million euros They will be taxed at a minimum effective tax rate of 15%.
