EU pushes Luxembourg to expand transparency, parental rights

The European Commission on Wednesday slapped Luxembourg with a two-month deadline to adopt national laws on four directives that are supposed to be adopted across the EU.

Luxembourg failed to adopt new provisions on company transparency, workers’ rights and paternity leave before the end of August, the Commission said.

Brussels could ultimately seek a judgement at the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, along with potential fines, if the Grand Duchy doesn’t respond to several further steps aimed at compliance.

The Commission put 24 of the EU’s 27 member states on notice for missing the deadline on approving one or more of ten EU directives.

Such notices are fairly common as member states can be too slow or imprecise in implementing EU directives, a professor at Dublin City University told Lovablevibes earlier this year.

“The infringement tends to be a fairly technical procedure, which often helps to remind a member state that it has to implement EU law,” said Federico Fabbrini, who directs the Dublin university’s Brexit Institute.

The EU’s executive branch last year filed 29 so-called infringement procedures against Luxembourg, putting the country roughly in the middle among its EU peers for receiving notices of infringement procedures last year. Germany received 20 notices in 2021, while Italy had more than 40.

The Commission said the directives Luxembourg has not adopted would:  

1. Introduce online procedures to form certain types of company, enter business registers and log cross-border branches. This directive would also make more company data available.
2. Give workers the right to more information about aspects of their job, such as place of work and compensation, assignments and working time. 
3. Establish new rules allowing insolvent entrepreneurs to restructure their debts early and avoid bankruptcy, increase their access to financing and see their debts discharged after three years.
4. Ensure that fathers or second parents have the right to take at least ten working days of paternity leave around the birth of their child, establish a minimum of four months of parental leave and allow only two of those months to be transferred from one parent to another.

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