IRU and ETF call on EU Commissioners to shed light on posted driver pay

IRU and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) have urged European Commission leaders to support the road transport sector by urgently clarifying how EU rules on posted driver pay are applied by Member States.

In a joint letter to European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, Roxana Mînzatu, and the European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, IRU and ETF have called on the European Commission to help standardise the information provided by Member States and improve the uniform application of Mobility Package 1 rules on posted driver remuneration.

IRU EU Advocacy Director Raluca Marian said, “Five years after the adoption of the EU’s Mobility Package 1, and three years after the start of the posting rules’ application, employers and employees who move goods and people across borders in the EU are still struggling to navigate through the myriads of national rules across the 27 Member States.”

“Clearly communicated rules on posted driver pay are essential for legal certainty, fair competition, and understanding drivers’ rights. It is high time that people in our sector know how much to pay and how much they should get,” she added.

The Mobility Package 1, the EU’s most ambitious reform on social standards for drivers, adopted in 2020, specifies when a driver is considered posted to a host country, which further requires a payment for that time at a level no lower than the minimum remuneration in the host country.

However, for a full application, Member States must clarify the minimum remuneration on their respective territories. Today’s legal complexity at the national level, the lack of information from EU Member States, and a lack of common understanding and transparency make compliance complicated and costly, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises that make up the majority of the road transport sector. Where information exists, it is often fragmented across different websites, difficult to understand, or not promptly updated, creating serious legal uncertainty for the sector.

To address this, IRU and ETF, the social partners representing employers and employees in the EU social dialogue committee for road transport, are calling on Vice-President Minzatu and Commissioner Tzitzikostas to support:

A standardised EU template for Member States, centralised on the dedicated European Commission’s portal, where clear and comprehensive information on national remuneration and its components should be published and regularly updated.
An EU-level remuneration calculator and guidance tool to help operators apply the rules consistently.

The current patchwork of national rules makes it extremely difficult, even for trained experts, to calculate the correct remuneration for posted drivers. For small operators, this complexity means they must rely on costly professional services or risk non-compliance.

A clear, centralised and user-friendly system would foster fair working conditions, improve enforcement and uphold the integrity of the EU single market.

Raluca Marian concluded, “We trust that Vice-President Minzatu and Commissioner Tzitzikostas will support a solution where operators stop being unfairly penalised by the complexity of posting rules and the lack of accessible information.

“Companies are practically obliged to seek expensive compliance advice from expert consultants, who, in turn, struggle to find reliable data. This can easily lead to payment errors.”