Posting of Workers and Business Trips in European Union: Towards a Clear Demarcation

European undertakings send, and will undoubtedly con­tinue to send, employees to other Member States in order to provide services to local entities. Such employees, tem­porarily assigned by their employers to work in another Member State, are referred to as posted workers. How­ever, the posting of workers is only ostensibly a matter as straightforward as a specific form of labour mobility whereby an undertaking, in exercising its freedom to pro­vide services, relies on employees engaged in one Mem­ber State to perform work in another. The issue becomes considerably more complex when one takes into account the interrelationship between the posting of workers and the institution commonly referred to as a “business trip”: a concept not recognised as such under EU law, albeit widely regulated and applied in the domestic legal systems of certain Member States. The primary objective of this study is to identify and analyse the legal challenges aris­ing in the field of workers’ mobility within the European Union. The analysis commences with an outline of the general legal framework established under EU law, with particular emphasis on the regime governing the posting of workers. Building upon the current state of the art, spe­cial attention is devoted to the conceptual and normative examination of the “business trip”, an institution absent from EU law and not uniformly recognised in the domes­tic laws of all Member States. In this context, the study examines national labour law provisions concerning “busi­ness trips” or analogous institutions in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

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