"Is migrant trauma, worker exploitation driven by EU subcontracting rules?"

When subcontracting was first introduced within the EU single market for the construction sector, it was meant to be a practical solution to the industry’s fluctuating demands. It offered companies the ability to manage workload peaks, access specialized skills, and promote cross-border mobility in a unified market.

Yet over the past few decades, what began as a tool for flexibility has morphed into a complex, opaque system that critics say enables labour exploitation, social dumping and regulatory evasion...

Roxana Mînzatu, the EU vice president responsible for social rights, skills, quality jobs and preparedness, has signalled her intention to include the topic in the European Commission’s upcoming Quality Jobs Roadmap and Labour Mobility Package...

“We need, and we will land, a fair labour mobility package next year – but how to do that is obviously a big challenge,” he told the event. He said the EU-level mandate to regulate and investigate must be extended. “The first thing is to empower the inspector to look at the increasing cross-border situation.”

He noted that 25% of posted workers in the EU are posted from outside the EU – “they are a vulnerable group who don’t know about their rights,” he said. “We need to look at what we have in the legislation and see what doesn’t work.”...

The parliament event heard a harrowing story from Ahmed Mahmoud, a 23-year-old construction worker who told lawmakers he migrated to Italy from Egypt by crossing the border to Trieste in the trunk of a car at the age of 17.

“I desperately needed to work to pay off my father’s debt for the journey,” he said, so he started working as a subcontracted drywaller. “Having no documents allowed for double exploitation – first during the journey and then in Italy,” he said.

He described brutal conditions for him and his colleagues at Italian construction sites, including two who couldn’t get housing because they didn’t have papers and ended up dying of CO2 suffocation from a space heater while they were sleeping on the construction site.”...