Costs and benefits of a Council decision implementing the European sectoral social partners' agreement concerning the implementation of the work in fishing convention, 2007 of the ILO : final report

The purpose of this study was to support the Commission's analysis of the costs and benefits of implementing the provisions of the European sectoral social partners' Agreement concerning the implementation of the Work in Fishing Convention, 2007 of the ILO, signed by Europêche and Cogeca on the employer's side and the European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF) on the trade union side in May 2013. As provided by Articles 154 and 155(2) of the TFEU, the European social partners requested for the Agreement to be implemented by Council Decision. In such cases, the Commission can either bring forward a proposal for a Council Directive or decide not to do so, based on an assessment of: - the mandate and representativeness of the signatory parties; - the legality of each clause of the agreement in relation to EU law; and - the appropriateness of Community action in light of the Better Regulation Agenda and the potential impact of its provisions on SMEs. The Council can then decide to accept or reject the proposal by the Commission for a Council Directive, but the text of the Agreement itself cannot be changed. Therefore, the study was to provide an assessment of the potential impact of any legislative changes which would be necessitated at Member State level. In order to do this, the following was done: - the characteristics of the sea fisheries sector in terms of the nature and size of the fleet and employment, skills and contractual trends in the sector, as well as collective bargaining coverage and wages were mapped; - the working conditions and occupational health and safety (OSH) in the sector, looking at the incidence, cost and trends of occupational accidents, injuries and work related disability were assessed; - information was gathered on the organisation of occupational health and accident insurance systems in the sector (in order to establish who bears the relevant costs and the potential impact on such costs); - it was assessed to what extent current EU and national legislation (and any planned changes to such legislation) applying to working conditions and OSH in the sector already meets, exceeds or falls below the standards set in the Agreement.