On Monday, the Services Directive went into effect, encouraging the free market of services across all European countries. This directive is still being criticised and challenged at the EU level by the United Left group, the Greens, the French Socialists and the European Trade Union Confederation due to the fact that it does not give any importance to workers' rights and the right to collective bargaining.

It's a disgrace for us considering how the Maltese political class offered no resistance within the European Parliament so that workers' rights and the right to collective bargaining would be safeguarded in the directive. Indeed, the two major political groups in the European Parliament, the Socialist parties and the European People's Party, jointly voted in favour of the directive.

It is also regrettable that the Nationalist government lauded the directive, when considering that the directive will lead to the social dumping of workers from one country to another, social inequality between different categories of workers, unfair competition, inferior conditions of work and decommissioning of collective bargaining.

The directive was designed to give companies all the rights to provide a service in another country without hindrance or the obligation to hold a permanent representation in the country in which they are doing business. The result of such a policy is that trade unions will lose the right to collective bargaining because they don't have anyone to negotiate with. In the recent Vaxholm case we saw that Sweden was forced to weaken its workers' rights and standards.

In order to protect workers' rights and not succumb to "social dumping" the European Commission must insert a clear legal protocol in all treaties where workers and social rights are given primacy over freedom of the market. We urge our Maltese representatives in the European Parliament to act critically and persistently towards this directive in emphasising the importance of worker's rights.