Escrivá asks to wait for the Spanish courts to interpret the TEU ruling on abuse of interim workers

MADRID, 23 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, José Luis Escrivá, has asked to wait for the Spanish courts to interpret the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (TEU), which considers that Spanish Law does not deter the abuse of interim in the Public Administrations and proposes making them permanent, since a "very extensive" interpretation has been made of it.

Thus, the minister has asked to wait to see how the Spanish courts interpret what the TEU suggests to them, since, in his opinion, said ruling refers to "some very specific cases", and conveys in a "clear" way the Spanish courts making final decisions.

In this way, the head of the Public Service spoke about this matter during the informative breakfast organized by Nueva Economía Fórum in Madrid, after it became known yesterday that the TUE points to "the lack of adequate measures" in Spanish legislation to prevent and sanction, in accordance with European standards, abuses arising from the successive use of temporary contracts, including non-permanent indefinite contracts successively extended.

In the ruling, the TEU considers that it is up to the Spanish Justice to modify consolidated national jurisprudence if it is based on an interpretation that is incompatible with the objectives of European legislation, particularly with the Framework Agreement on fixed-term work.

During breakfast, Escrivá stressed that the underlying problem is the excessive temporality that has existed in Spain "for decades" and that still continues to exist. "In Spain we have understood that flexibility in labor relations was achieved both in the public and private spheres (...) by having large reserves of temporary workers that could be adjusted up and down," he indicated.

Therefore, this temporality is the reason why Europe "understands us wrong, has understood us wrong and is right to understand us wrong," stressed Escrivá, who has also detailed that this "not only [happens] with this sentence, but in different reports or discussions within the framework of the Recovery Plan".

"In fact, many of the decisions that have been made in Spain, in the public sector now, in relation to human resources, even at the micromanagement level, were made by a general directorate called Personnel Costs. Therefore , human resources in the Public Administration were understood as a cost, when human resources are a long-term investment (...) and this has also happened to us in the private sector," Escrivá lamented.

Thus, he pointed out that this situation is what is being attempted to be alleviated with the labor reform and what is going to be addressed in the Public Administration, through the planning of human resources and the elimination of the replacement rate that was announced. from the Public Function portfolio a few weeks ago.

For Escrivá, it is necessary to move towards a model in the Administration that has a frame of reference based on functional competencies, in which it is perfectly defined what type of public officials and workers are needed and, subsequently, look for what profile this function covers.

"This planning does not exist in the General State Administration, nor in practically any public administration in Spain. This is the great transformation," he stated.