EFFAT launches Model Directive to End Exploitation in Subcontracting and Labour Intermediation

EFFAT launches Model Directive to End Exploitation in Subcontracting and Labour Intermediation

May 13, 2025| Agriculture, Featured, In the spotlight, Press release

Brussels, 13 May 2025 - In a crucial step forward for the protection of workers' rights across Europe, EFFAT - the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions - officially presented its Model Directive on Labour Intermediaries and Fair Working Conditions across Subcontracting Chains to Roxana Mînzatu, European Commission Executive Vice-President responsible for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness during a meeting in Brussels today.

EFFAT General Secretary Enrico Somaglia handed over the proposal, underlining EFFAT's call for an ambitious EU legal initiative to tackle abusive subcontracting and unregulated labour intermediation - two interlinked practices increasingly driving exploitation, social dumping, and unfair competition in EFFAT sectors and beyond.

"For too long, companies have used complex subcontracting chains and unscrupulous labour intermediaries to cut costs and escape responsibility, leaving workers-especially mobile and migrant ones-exposed to exploitation," said Enrico Somaglia. "This EFFAT Model directive is about restoring fair work: equal treatment, transparency, and fairness at the workplace."

The EFFAT's Model Directive sets out concrete legislative proposals to:

• Limiting subcontracting and promoting direct employment by prohibiting subcontracting of core business activities and ensuring that equal pay for equal work applies in every workplace and throughout the subcontracting chain.
• Defining the conditions to act as labour market intermediary through the creation of a community license and national registers and by tackling exploitative gangmaster practices.
• Increasing the frequency and bolstering the effectiveness of labour inspections, setting a minimum threshold for inspections, and requiring Member States to use cross-checking of data between enforcement authorities to identify potential labour abuses.

Additional elements of the EFFAT Model Directive covers aspects linked to decent housing, information and consultation rights and fair recruitment.

The proposal is part of EFFAT's long-standing mobilisation to end labour abuse in subcontracting and labour intermediation, which gained traction following COVID-19 outbreaks in meat processing plants where subcontracted migrant workers face appalling conditions.

The momentum to restore fair working conditions is now. With the European Parliament preparing an own-initiative report on subcontracting and intermediaries and following the recent adoption of an EP resolution that strongly supports EFFAT's call for a directive, the pressure for EU action is mounting. In September 2024, EFFAT, together with ETF and EFBWW, mobilised thousands of workers in Strasbourg, sending a powerful message for urgent legislative change.

EFFAT now calls on the European Commission to seize this critical moment and integrate the core elements of the Model Directive into the forthcoming Quality Jobs Roadmap, expected by the end of 2025.

"This Directive would be a turning point" - Somaglia added. "We welcome Executive Vice-President Mînzatu commitment to defend worker' rights in the most precarious sectors of the economy. That is the only way to tackle labour shortages and create a labour market based on fair competition and equal treatment. Our Model Directive serves exactly that purpose. The time for political courage and concrete action is now."

• See EFFAT Model Directive on Labour Intermediaries and Fair Working Conditions across Subcontracting Chains
• See the EFFAT Policy Brief

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