We just wrote a note to Commissioner Spidla of DG Employment and Social Affairs requesting him to provide an interpretation to this term, so as to enable our cooperatives that are specialised in the employment of disabled people to compete for those types of tenders.
At the same time, we are trying to obtain from DG Market itself, the author of the directive, a proper grammatical interpretation of the sentence in art 19 where the term “protected workshop” appears, because the sentence might be interpreted as implying that such “protected workshops” should employ at least 50% of disabled people.
However, according to our analysis of the sentence in various languages, this is not the case. We will keep you informed of the results of this double action.
