MEPs reject UK opt-out

Mark Mardell|11:34 UK time, Wednesday, 17 December 2008

MEPs have voted overwhelmingly to scrap Britain's opt-out from the 48-hour week in three years' time.

But it doesn't mean for certain that people will be stopped from working more than an average of 48 hours a week from 2011.

What happens now? Britain certainly doesn't lose its opt-out straight away. There'll be talks between MEPs and ministers from the European Union's 27 countries aimed at finding a compromise. In theory, if the ministers refuse to budge the status quo stands and Britain keeps its opt-out.

But there will be intense pressure to negotiate a solution. The European Court of Justice has ruled that doctors' on-call time should be part of the 48-hour week if they have to sleep over at a hospital.

France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain all have their own opt-outs about on-call time and they will be eager to find a solution. That probably means a negotiated solution that, from the British government's point of view, is worse than the current position.