display

Christina Leiner watched the press conferences and video messages from Angela Merkel.

She heard the request to minimize social contact and the request to refrain from any unnecessary travel.

And yet she gets on a well-staffed Ryanair plane to Berlin every Friday evening in Brussels.

She then flies back to Brussels on Sunday evening.

Week after week, on the plane, on the subway, on the bus to the airport.

Leiner, who asked WELT AM SONNTAG not to use her real name, sees no other choice for herself.

She works for the European Parliament in Brussels, from the start as a weekend home driver.

Her husband works in Berlin, moving is out of the question for him for professional reasons.

And so Leiner has come to terms with the pendulum.

So far, at least.

Because even now, at the height of the second corona wave, according to information from WELT AM SONNTAG, hundreds of EU officials travel to Brussels every week to work from home there.

The reason: The rules of the European institutions dictate it to employees.

display

During the working week from Monday to Friday, officials and employees who have been hired across Europe must be at their place of work.

Even if you are not allowed into the office there.

Since mid-October, the corona measures in Belgium, which is particularly badly affected by the epidemic, have obligated all employees who are able to only work from home.

Anyone who can work online should not come to work.

Parliamentarians are allowed to stay at home

The Europaviertel is therefore deserted and the European Parliament is largely closed.

Employees only enter it in exceptional cases.

When parliament meets next week, many seats in the plenary hall will remain free because a large number of parliamentarians only join in from their countries of origin.

For the employees of the European Parliament and the other institutions, the following applies: Teleworking from the kitchen table must also take place in Brussels.

display

“Mobile work from outside the workplace is prohibited in principle,” confirms a spokeswoman for the EU commission WELT am SONNTAG.

“This also applies to the place of origin.” For the majority of EU officials, this regulation is completely unproblematic: They live with their families in or around Brussels or Luxembourg, where large parts of the European institutions are also located.

There are reasons for the strict home office rules, which are quite similar to those in the private sector: tax, insurance and, last but not least, the employer's need to be able to call his employees back to work at any time.

This is particularly true of the EU institutions, which recruit their staff from all over Europe, from the North Cape to Cyprus.

"If we open again after six weeks of lockdown, we have to get things up and running again," said a parliamentary HR officer, explaining the procedure.

"It cannot be that someone is stuck on a Greek island because there are no more planes."

These are the lockdown strategies of the European states

Most European countries are already in partial lockdown, and Austria's government is now following suit.

But the measures do not seem to be sufficient everywhere.

Some states are now tightening the rules again.

Source: WORLD

display

For weekend commuters like Leiner, the regulations are now a problem in the Corona period.

The fact that it is not an isolated case is illustrated by the still well-occupied planes that take off Friday and Sunday from Brussels Airport, even if the number of connections has decreased dramatically here since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The high-speed trains to Germany and France also continue to run, albeit far less often than before.

How many EU officials are affected can only be estimated;

the institutions do not collect data on how many of their employees commute.

They must state their place of residence at the place of employment as their place of residence.

"What Commission staff do at the weekend, for example commuting to a second home to spend time with their family, is their private matter, and the commission does not ask for such private information," said the spokeswoman.

This also applies to other EU institutions.

Up to five percent commute on the weekend

According to the budget for 2020, the EU institutions have 47,000 permanent or temporary employees.

According to their information, around 33,000 people work for the EU Commission alone.

From the staff of the European Parliament it is said that an estimated maximum of five percent of employees in Brussels regularly commute home over the weekend.

Extrapolated that would mean hundreds

of EU employees are affected by the rule.

With a rough calculation with 47,000 employees, there would be up to 2,350 weekend commuters at the locations of the EU institutions.

You are now faced with a choice in lockdown: either stay in your home office in Brussels and not see your partner and family for weeks - or continue commuting and expose yourself and others to an increased risk of infection.

A not inconsiderable number of those affected should therefore commute.

And this despite the fact that even ministerial meetings are taking place virtually again and national politicians are foregoing trips to Brussels.

Criticism of this situation comes from Berlin. "In order to prevent the further spread of the corona virus, the rule that full-time EU employees have to commute to Brussels to work from home should be overturned as quickly as possible," demands Gerald Ullrich.

The FDP politician is chairman of the Bundestag's EU committee.

display

In view of the high number of people affected, exceptions to the pandemic are also being considered in Brussels.

The General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, the body in which the member states coordinate with one another, has come a long way: The administration already has special regulations for the current Covid phase.

There, too, around 3,000 employees are only allowed to work from abroad in exceptional cases.

"At the moment, however, we have overruled this regulation to a limited extent and allow employees to work mobile from abroad due to Covid-19 until the end of January," says a spokesman.

The supervisor has to agree in every single case.

In the EU Parliament, the works council is now also dealing with the problem.

So far, employees there have only been able to work from abroad if relatives there need their help.

But they have to work part-time, even if they usually have a full-time position.

Because the expatriation allowance paid in Brussels is no longer applicable, some of those affected only receive 65 percent of their net salary.

Will working from home become the norm?

Never before have so many people worked from home as in the Corona period.

Often because you can't keep enough distance in the office.

Federal Labor Minister Heil wants to keep this option in part even after the pandemic.

Source: WELT / Jan-Friedrich Funk

The EU Commission wants to enable its employees to work in their country of origin in December - but only in the week before Christmas and only if their supervisor allows it.

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

We will be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.

Source: WELT AM SONNTAG