Illegal employment is illegal

And it should be stopped. This is the gist of a new EU law that is being debated in the European Parliament and which the French Presidency hopes to wrap up before the end of the year.

As EPP spokesman on this dossier, over the past year I have been closely following its progress. Needless to say, touching as it does on the sensitive subject of illegal immigration, this dossier is red hot in political terms and attracts much controversy.

The new law would toughen penalties against employers who are caught employing irregular immigrants illegally.

As things stand, EU countries not only have different penalties that apply for illegal employment but in many cases existing penalties are simply too soft. As a result they do not present a real deterrent with the consequence that the illegal employment of irregular immigrants remains a common, if not rampant, occurrence in many EU countries.

This cannot be right as it makes Europe more attractive for illegal immigration and increases its "pull-factor" for prospective immigrants. Moreover, it exposes immigrants to exploitation by unscrupulous employers, it cheats regular local workers out of their jobs and it hurts law-abiding employers who seek to compete on a level playing field.

Instead, the new law would oblige EU countries to put into their statute books a series of tougher sanctions against offending employers.

Sanctions would include harsher financial penalties, the payment of outstanding salaries (immigrants are often left unpaid), the payment of taxes and social security contributions and even the payment of the costs involved in returning the immigrants caught in illegal employment.

Moreover, companies caught employing immigrants illegally would be disqualified from public contracts and from EU funds and could even be closed down altogether.

In certain instances, they are even liable to criminal sanctions.

Criminal sanctions would apply in cases of repeated offences, in cases where employers engage four or more immigrants illegally, in cases where immigrants are exposed to particularly exploitative conditions and in cases involving human trafficking.

I support all these sanctions. My only reservation is on the closing down of businesses since I find this sanction to be disproportionate and would even harm legitimate workers employed with the same business. If anything, it should be reserved for cases of a criminal nature.

Last week, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament held a special hearing on this law to allow different sectors to have their say.

Needless to say, the reactions were as varied as they were contrasting. Whereas, for instance, European trade union representatives found the law to be draconian against immigrants, business representatives found the proposal to be too draconian against businesses.

As always, the truth must lie somewhere in between. And the truth is that Europe's labour market is indeed plagued by undeclared work involving nationals as well as immigrants, whether regular or irregular.

In the case of immigrants, working conditions are often exploitative, seriously lacking health and safety standards, low wages, unpaid wages and long working hours.

This does not mean that countries may not issue work permits for non-nationals if their labour market requires new workers. That is entirely up to them depending on the particular circumstances of their national job markets.

And it should continue to be up to them to determine their requirements for foreign workers.

In Malta too, it appears that the national authorities do issue work permits for non-nationals, including immigrants, especially in those sectors where Maltese nationals do not appear inclined to go.

However, there is little to reassure us that the immigrants concerned are regular and that are also regularly engaged, working under established national rules, in dignified working conditions, getting paid a wage that is no lower than the national minimum wage and paying their tax dues.

On the contrary, there is a niggling feeling that they are not regular at all and that they are being exploited.

Reports in the media of action taken against employers who are caught with irregular employees remain few and far between.

Crucially, the new law would require member states to step up their enforcement by requiring systematic inspection of a given number of business enterprises every year. This would oblige governments to strengthen national authorities to combat undeclared work of nationals and non-nationals alike.

The new law follows hot on the heels of a recently-adopted EU law - the Return Directive - on returning irregular immigrants back to the country of transit or their country of origin. It would add a new tool in the fight against illegal immigration and it would send the message, in no uncertain terms, that illegal employment is illegal. And it should be stopped.

Readers who would like to ask questions to be answered in this column can send an e-mail, identifying themselves, to contact@simonbusuttil.eu or through www.simonbusuttil.eu.

Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.