Finally, it acknowledges that the maximum weekly working time of 60 hours per week must be respected.

We demanded that this period should be reduced to four years, with a maximum weekly working time of fifty-four hours (subject to negotiation) during that time.

The directive also indicates the maximum weekly working time of 48 hours, although it allows it to be calculated as an average over a reference period of four months.

As the rapporteur has accepted the Commission position on the location of the maximum weekly working time provision, in Article 3, the part of our Amendment No 1 which proposes to change recital 16 should also be deleted.

The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs nevertheless proposes that Member States may authorise the calculation of the inactive parts of on-call time in a specific manner in order to comply with the maximum weekly working time.

Under Art 17, a derogation to allow for a reduction of the daily minimum rest of 8 hours could only be granted if a period of rest followed immediately, and a reduction could not allow the maximum weekly working time to be exceeded.

We therefore rejected the amendments seeking to remove from the scope of this directive control over the maximum weekly working time, night working hours, weekly rest periods and driving times between these rest periods and a two-weekly limitation of driving hours as proposed by the Commission in Annex 1.

The Council, for example, wanted to reduce the maximum weekly working time when using the opt-out from 78 hours to 60 or 65 hours and proposed banning the use of opt-outs when signing an employment contract or limiting the period of consent given by employees to work in an opt-out regime to one year.