By Francois Murphy
SALZBURG, Austria (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday decried European rules allowing firms in low-wage countries to post workers elsewhere as a "betrayal" of the European spirit, seeking to overcome eastern European resistance to curbing the practice.
Macron has pledged to overhaul a system under which "posted" workers can be sent to other European Union states on contracts that must guarantee the host country's minimum wage, but under which taxes and social charges are paid in the home nation.
He says the system creates unfair competition in wealthier nations like France and Austria, a country that borders four eastern European countries and where on Wednesday he met Chancellor Christian Kern, an ally on this issue.
Macron is pushing for the duration of these contracts to be limited to one year rather than two under a new European Commission proposal, to reinforce measures to ensure the rules are obeyed, and to guarantee equal pay with local workers.
"The single European market and the free movement of workers is not meant to create a race to the bottom in terms of social regulations," Macron told reporters after meeting Kern.
Macron is on a three-day tour of central and eastern Europe that he hopes will help break a deadlock between western nations and poorer eastern European states that has lasted for years.
He and Kern were due to meet the prime ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia - two lower-wage eastern countries - later on Wednesday.
"The posted workers' directive as it currently functions is a betrayal of the European spirit in its essence," Macron said.
He and other western European leaders will need the support of eastern counterparts to overhaul the rules, and Macron's comments raised pressure on the hold-outs.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia make up half of the four so-called Visegrad states, a group that has opposed western European countries on issues including taking in refugees, and which has said Macron's proposals on posted workers go too far.
But the other two Visegrad states - Poland and Hungary - have often taken a harder line, prompting Macron to accuse them of spurning European values. He will not visit them on this trip, during which he will also visit Bulgaria and Romania.
He also said France and Austria shared views on the need to harmonise fiscal rules, build up a common European investment capacity and a euro zone budget.
"All of this encourages us to move forward with a new initiative to relaunch Europe before the end of the year," he said, a project given impetus in part by Britain's referendum vote last year to leave the EU.