The evidence provided at EU level by both the Portable Document (PD) A1 report as well as the report on the prior notification tools reveals only a fraction of the administrative data available at national level on the posting of workers. This leaves many research questions as well as country-specific phenomena unanswered. Knowing that the more we know about posting, the better we can discuss it, this project proposal aims to promote the debate on posting based on facts and figures. In this respect, Posting.Stat brings together a consortium of 12 universities and research centres from 10 different Member States, supported by several European social partner organisations. HIVA – KU Leuven is responsible for the project management and the overall coordination of the project activities. The geographical scope of the project proposal covers the six main ‘sending’ Member States (Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Luxembourg) and the six main ‘receiving’ Member States (Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) of posted workers.
Extracting administrative micro-data from the competent public authorities, complemented by desk research as well as by expert interviews, should result in more accurate figures on the scale, characteristics and impact of intra-EU posting, both in the main receiving and sending Member States. In addition, we would like to pay additional attention to some ‘forgotten sectors’ in the posting debate (e.g., the live performance sector, the healthcare sector, the research and technology sector) as well to the subsectors of some labour-intensive sectors of activity (e.g., construction). Furthermore, the objective of the research proposal is to gain a better insight into the scale and profile of fraudulent posting. Finally, the research project aims to focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well to make a first assessment of the implementation and correct application of Directive (EU) 2018/957 amending Directive 96/71/EC concerning the posting of workers in the framework of the transnational provision of services.