The Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament (PETI) decided that the complaint of a Polish company posting workers to France and harassed by the controls of the local labor inspection will be further processed, as the website Prawo.pl reported.

According to Stefan Schwarz, the president of the European Labor Mobility Institute, quoted by Prawo.pl, this was the first time that a Polish service company defended its rights so strongly using the instrument of a complaint to the PETI. It was about the Polish company Aterima Work, which provides temporary work services in France. The French labor inspectorate accused it of pursuing permanent business activity in that country without registering a company there.

Wojciech Rzepka, a representative of Aterima Work, said that from 2018 to 2020, the French labor inspection carried out 15 inspections. 

“The inspectors looked for every single breach in the field of compliance with labor rights for which they could punish us, but never found it. Therefore, they accused us of having conducted a permanent activity in France, despite the fact that we did not have any infrastructure or permanent employees in that country,” Rzepka explained.

According to him, the inspectors forced him to register his business in France, threatening that otherwise, he would face charges of committing illegal work and activity without the required registration.

As Prawo.pl reminds, under European law there is no requirement to register a business in each Member State in which the entrepreneur provides his services. It is one of the four fundamental freedoms of the European internal market.

(PAP)