The European Parliament's committee on civil liberties has voted overwhelmingly to approve a draft directive that would see employers of illegal immigrants in the EU being penalised - while the illegal immigrants would be granted legal conditions of employment.

According to a media statement by the European Parliament on January 22 2009, between 4.5 million and eight million illegal immigrants were employed in the construction, farming, hotel and other sectors in the EU.

MEPs are calling for criminal law sanctions in the most serious cases and want to make companies responsible for the actions of their subcontractors.

The "sanctions directive" will be debated at a plenary session of the European Parliament on February 19 2009.
 
The European Commission's draft legislation is supposed to complement other measures, such as the "return directive" and the "blue card" directive, the overall aim being to combat illegal immigration more firmly while encouraging legal immigration, the media statement said. 

The "sanctions directive" would introduce minimum penalties at European level against employers of illegal immigrants. 

Employers could be fined, forced to pay wages in arrears at legal levels or even banned for up to five years from bidding for public sector contracts or from receiving state aid - whether national or European.
 
The directive would also lay down criminal law penalties against employers for repeat offences, where a large number of people in an irregular situation are employed, where the working conditions are exploitative, where the employee is a victim of human trafficking and this is known to the employer, or if the employee is a minor.
 
An employer who is found guilty must also refund any state aid received the previous year and pay a graduated fine according to the number of illegal immigrants employed.  In addition, the employer must pay a sum equal to the amount of taxes and other levies that the employer would have paid if the worker had been employed legally and, where applicable, the cost of returning the migrant.
 
The employment relationship will be assumed to have lasted at least three months unless the employer or worker supplies proof to the contrary. 

MEPs demanded that the procedures necessary for the employee to recover the unpaid wages must be automatic, without any need for the employee to take action.
 
MEPs successfully argued that EU member states should establish lower financial penalties for people using clandestine immigrants as domestic staff, provided the working conditions are not exploitative.
 
The European Parliament also wants EU member states to set up mechanisms to enable illegal immigrants to lodge complaints.

Third parties designated by member states, such as voluntary bodies or trade unions, should be allowed to report a guilty employer without running the risk of being subsequently taken to court for assisting someone to stay in the country illegally. 

Irregular immigrants will, if they cooperate with the legal action against their employer,
be able to get a temporary residence permit.
 
If the guilty employer is a subcontractor, the contracting firm must also be held liable, and even fully liable if it turns out that the contracting employer knew the subcontractor was acting illegally. 

A list of employers who have infringed the directive may be made public, MEPs decided.
 
EU member states are asked to conduct effective inspections sufficiently frequently to check on the employment of non-EU nationals in an irregular situation.

They must also require employers to check that their non-EU employees have a valid residence permit and inform a national authority of any new recruitments of non-EU nationals.