"It would not be good for the EU because I think that out of the four freedoms of the famous Treaty of Rome… the freedom to provide services is by far the weakest. And modern economies are more and more based on services," Morawiecki was quoted as saying by the Financial Times newspaper.
The minister stressed that even though EU member states should work on providing more freedom to services and eliminating red tape, some of them were doing the opposite. In particular, Morawiecki mentioned French President Emanuel Macron's endeavors to introduce temporary workers regulations to prevent undercutting of French labor rates and lower labor standards.
"They talk about social dumping. I would say how about corporate dumping? You have very strong French banks and retail companies in Poland, and you have very strong dividends out of those companies, and we do not tax those dividends by the way, and we do not call it corporate dumping even if we feel that those companies are advantaged vis-a-vis domestic companies of a similar kind," Morawiecki said.
Since being elected in May, Macron has repeatedly addressed the issue of market labor regulations, calling for stricter rules for posted workers, as France ranks second in posted workers numbers rate among the EU states. Among other measures, Macron proposed to set the legal limit of how long a temporary worker could be posted to another country — to 12 months, while the Maltese officials proposed a 24-month limit. The EU legislation is not imposing such time limits on posted workers at the moment.
