The proposed EU Directive on Temporary and Agency Workers would have forced employers to offer the same pay, holiday and pension entitlements to temporary and permanent staff, after six weeks of casual employment.

Prime minister Gordon Brown was personally involved in lobbying against the directive, which business leaders argued would undermine Europe's ability to compete on the world market and hit jobs.

The proposal was narrowly defeated at a meeting of European employment ministers in Brussels yesterday but, according to the Financial Times, this was a temporary win for the British government and it could be forced to accept the directive as early as next year.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) claimed 252,000 jobs across the entire economy could be at risk, based on a survey of 507 companies in September. This research did not break down the impact on individual sectors, such as the print industry.

John Cridland, deputy director-general of the CBI, last night congratulated the government for ensuring the directive was not passed.

"A quarter of a million UK jobs would have been in real jeopardy if it had been bullied through in Brussels," Cridland said. "Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK prefer to work on a project-by-project basis while employers depend on access to this pool of flexible labour so they can respond to the ebbs and flows of the economy."

However, trade unions are strongly in favour of the directive, and union Unite has urged the government to support the initiative.

Casual employment is widespread in the print industry and Unite has been campaigning against the exploitation of temporary workers. The union presented the Department of Trade and Industry with a survey showing the "abuse and misuse" of causal workers in June, including claims that book publisher Harper Collins was paying temp workers far below the rate for permanent employees and did not offer overtime opportunities to staff because it was cheaper to employ agency workers.