This week the European Parliament will examine a proposal aimed at improving the health and safety of pregnant workers.
Provisions and rules governing maternity leave differ widely between EU member states. Key issues that will be discussed in the EP tomorrow (a vote is scheduled for Wednesday) include the length of the maternity leave period, whether it should be paid in full and whether there should be the introduction of a two-week paternal leave period.
At a workshop held earlier this month, MEPs and experts had a chance to exchange views on an impact assessment, which shows that costs per birth would vary between €0 and €5,000, depending on the member state, due to differing starting points for payment of allowances and differing lengths of leave.
The committee on women’s rights and gender equality is proposing an extension of minimum fully paid maternity leave to 20 weeks – including six weeks minimum post-natal leave. The committee also proposed two weeks minimum paternity leave.
The initial 2008 European Commission proposal was to extend the current minimum of 14 weeks to 18 weeks, six of which would have to be taken after childbirth.
The commission proposal recommends women are paid 100 per cent of their salary during this time. However, it did not propose making full payment mandatory but simply said it should not be below the rate of sick-leave payments.
Portuguese Socialist Edite Estrela, the EP rapporteur on the issue, wants to extend the minimum period leave to 20 weeks with full pay.
She believes that 20 weeks’ leave would be appropriate because it would give women time to recover from their confinement, encourage breastfeeding and enable a mother to forge a strong bond with her child.
Maltese legislation currently provides for 14 weeks of maternity leave. The EU proposals to extend maternity leave and introduce paternal leave would cost the Maltese economy more than €12 million a year, according to a recent study by the Malta Business Bureau.
But in the EU different viewpoints – cultural, ideological, and political – have led to debate on the proposals.
Speaking at the workshop, Dutch Green MEP Marije Cornelissen said that “costs come in nice clean figures, while benefits do not”.
British MEP Marina Yannakoudakis (ECR) and British Liberal Elizabeth Lynne (ALDE) voiced concern about the draft law’s possible impact on women’s employment opportunities and especially on employer’s attitudes to employing young women.
On the subject of paternity leave, Ms Estrela’s report calls for a minimum of two weeks fully paid leave for fathers to promote shared responsibilities between men and women as well as conciliation of professional and private life.
So far there are no rules on paternity leave at EU level. MEPs who oppose this provision argue that paternity leave lies outside the scope of this legislation, which covers the “health and safety of pregnant women”.
The proposal also addresses other issues to protect and ensure safety at work for pregnant and breastfeeding workers, including the prohibition of dismissal following the end of maternity leave, provisions covering night work and overtime and adoption leave.
A few days ago, the Malta Employers’ Association said the government should share the maternity leave benefits with employers over a transitional four-year period, and eventually foot the entire bill itself.
Malta is currently one of the few EU countries where maternity leave is paid by employers, so the EU maternity leave proposals came as a threat to employers’ and a disadvantage to female employees who would need to take maternity leave.
Earlier this year, the Malta Business Bureau (MBB) expressed its disapproval of the current EP proposals, saying that they would cost the local economy about €12 million per annum.
But Labour MEP Edward Scicluna, an economist by profession, rebutted the MBB’s statement, saying that extending maternity leave to 20 weeks and introducing two weeks of paternity leave would cost the local economy about €5 million.
In a paper he presented a few months ago, Prof. Scicluna spoke in favour of the maternity leave extension proposals, saying that Malta has the opportunity to see a significant increase of up to nine per cent in the number of working women.
Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil had said that if approved, the new law on maternity leave would, for the first time, give self-employed women the right to maternity leave on much the same level as employed women.
This means that they will have the right to maternity leave for the duration of 14 weeks, although this will be voluntary in nature – that is, they may choose not to take it.