The engineers were released from detention on Friday night, Fabrizio Vittoria Beijer, an EU lawyer with Momentius LPA, told The Local, adding that they were intending to return to work on the SSAB site as soon as they receive their identity documents back from the police.
Fabrizio Vittoria Beijer, an EU lawyer with Momentius LPA who supported Maes in the case, said that although the workers had not received the full copy of the decision from the Migration Agency, which is the appeal body in the case, it appeared to have accepted the arguments he had used in the appeal.
"The agency both confirmed over the phone and over mail that the 19 decisions were overturned and that they accepted our appeal," he said.
In a statement sent to The Local, the police in Sweden's Eastern Region, who carried out the raid, confirmed that the Migration Agency had lifted the deportation decisions.
"The Swedish Migration Agency has lifted the deportation decision regarding the 19 Filipino citizens based on the documents that were available at the time," the police wrote. "For our part, we do not share that assessment. We believe that there are circumstances surrounding the posting and the reports to the Swedish Work Environment Authority that indicate that the conditions for posting do not apply."
Bart Maes, the Dutch lawyer who arranged the workers' posting under the EU Posted Workers Directive, who revealed the workers' release In a press statement issued on Sunday, denied Migration Agency claims that overcrowding at detention centres had played a role.
"For the record: the capacity problems at the detention centres that Migration Agency mentioned to Södermanlands Nyheter yesterday morning have nothing to do with the releases. The men are free because the decisions against them were unlawful," he said.
Swedish police on October 7th seized the workers in a highly publicised raid carried out in cooperation with seven government agencies – the Swedish Work Environment Agency, the Swedish Labour Markets Authority, the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, the Swedish Gender Equality Agency and the Swedish Tax Agency.
"A total of 20 foreign nationals were found to be without permission to reside and work in Sweden. They have now been taken into custody and will be deported from Sweden with a re-entry ban," the police said in a press release.
But Maes told The Local on Friday that the workers (of whom there were in fact 19) all had the right to work in Sweden under the EU Posted Workers Directive.
"I have concluded that either the Swedish [authorities] don't know European law or they do know and don't care and I don't know what's worse," he told The Local.
"It was all prepared up front with a Swedish lawyer and with us involved, and they ticked every box. This is the purest Intra-EU service provision you will find on the planet," he claimed.
"The Swedish Police say that they did not have Swedish work permits. That's correct. You don't need a Swedish work permit. That's what the European Court of Justice has been saying since 1994. They should have known that."
The workers, he continued, all had valid Dutch residency permits and "almost all" were still within the 90 days they were allowed to be in Sweden under Schengen rules.
In a statement to The Local, the police said that they still intended to pursue the case further as they disagreed with the Migration Agency's decision. According to a redacted copy of one decision seen by The Local, there is no possibility for the police to appeal.
"We are continuing to work on the case and conducting further checks to review the arrangement, but as this is an ongoing government process, we cannot go into what specific measures or foreign government contacts are involved," they said.
Vittoria Beijer said that the police's decision had stemmed from two aspects of the posting, both of which he argued were in fact legal.
"The police, in their decision, said you can't be posted because you are not continuously residing in The Netherlands, which means that you have been forced to move to The Netherlands and then posted to Sweden, and that this is actually is a construction to avoid to applying for a normal residence permit," he explained.
Then the second aspect of the decisions was, 'can this person be posted by a Dutch company and work for an Italian company?'," he continued. "The police said this is not allowed."
The police, Vittoria Beijer said, had been wrong on both points.
"These people have been living and working in The Netherlands for more than a year, so it's not like this has just been arranged just so they can move here and start working here in Sweden. They were working in Netherlands, performing activities in Netherlands and the Italian company also has a Dutch company in The Netherlands. This is intra-EU mobility, which is totally allowed by national law and European law."
Maes told The Local that he intended to keep pursuing the case until Sweden paid damages and legal fees and allowed them to return to the site to continue the job.
"We are going to talk with the Swedish state, the Swedish authorities, who are going to pay the bill. And it will be a huge bill," he said. "These Filipinos, who are highly skilled workers from the Netherlands, they will come back and they will complete the job, whether the Swedish like it or not."