Parental leave: the social partners

(B2) It was John Monks, the General Secretary of the ETUC and Ernest-Antoine Seillière, head of Business Europe (European employers), who went to see the European Commissioner for Employment, Vladimir Spidla, together, to ask him to give them time to negotiate on parental leave. The enemy brothers thus seemed reconciled in their desire to see the Commission avoid getting involved in this question which had been the subject of a European agreement between social partners at the end of 1995 before being transformed into a directive in 1996.