With regards to various issues appearing in the media relating to working time negotiations in the EPSCO Council held on 9th June, the Ministry for Social Policy has said that it would like to make the following clarifications:

1. "The statement that the 'revision of the working time directive will grant them the right for the first time to refuse to work more than a 48-hour week' is incorrect. Every Maltese worker has had the right to refuse to work more than an average of 48 hours per week averaged over a 17-week reference period since 2004 when the Organisation of Working Time Regulations 2004 came into force. This limit is not of 48 hours per week but of an average of 48 over 17 weeks. Thus an employee who chooses not to work longer than this average may be required to work more than 8 hours overtime in a particular week provided that the cumulative average of 48 hours is not exceeded.
2. The right to opt out will remain available to all Member States including Malta.
3. The draft proposal approved by Council by Qualified Majority Voting allows Member States to choose, if they want, to divide on-call time into active and inactive on-call time and to exclude inactive on-call time from the calculation of working time. This concession was allowed for certain Member States where the practice already allows this. In fact it is this practice which has caused problems following the ECJ decisions relating to SIMAP and JAEGER. In Malta all on-call time has always been considered as working time and Member States retain the right to continue to consider all on-call time whether active or inactive as working time. Government has no intention of changing this practise.
4. The draft proposal provides for a maximum capping of working time which is set at 60 hours averaged over a three-month period which is extendable through collective agreement. The Maltese position is that this should be set at 65 hours over a three-month period. There is the possibility of a second capping set at 65 hours over a three-month period where inactive on-call time is considered as working time and there is no collective agreement.
5. The proposal for a new directive on working time involves a co-decision process. This requires agreement on each clause to be reached between Council and the European Parliament before any agreed directive can enter into force. This process is likely to be difficult because of the considerable separation of the respective positions of both Council and Parliament. In any case, even if agreement on the precise text is reached, the directive will require a further three-year period after agreement before entering into force in Member States. Thus it is premature at this stage to comment in any definitive way about the issue."