Doctors' Working Lives News
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Thursday, May 12, 2005
European Parliament votes to scrap opt-out
"The European Parliament has voted to scrap the opt-out within three years."
There is just so much news on this today that I can't even post it all here. Here is the official lowdown from the EU parliament, the main list of press articles, and a useful BBC Q&A.
However, a couple of points to keep in mind:
This still has to make it past the Council of Ministers. It has not been agreed as yet. This is a very big step but not the final step. According to MEP Stephen Hughes, as well as the UK, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia and Malta also want to keep the opt-out and this may block it. Watch this space.
What Parliament has done is voted in favour of the Cercas report. There has been much talk about how "all on call time will count as working time", but from what I can gather, they are talking about resident on call time only.
"Within three years" means "within three years of the new WTD being enforced" - we are probably still talking about 2010, not 2008.
Comments welcome on the discussion forum! Any further info would be great.
There is just so much news on this today that I can't even post it all here. Here is the official lowdown from the EU parliament, the main list of press articles, and a useful BBC Q&A.
However, a couple of points to keep in mind:
This still has to make it past the Council of Ministers. It has not been agreed as yet. This is a very big step but not the final step. According to MEP Stephen Hughes, as well as the UK, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia and Malta also want to keep the opt-out and this may block it. Watch this space.
What Parliament has done is voted in favour of the Cercas report. There has been much talk about how "all on call time will count as working time", but from what I can gather, they are talking about resident on call time only.
"Within three years" means "within three years of the new WTD being enforced" - we are probably still talking about 2010, not 2008.
Comments welcome on the discussion forum! Any further info would be great.
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