Promotion for trying to kill the opt-out?

PA reports that Labour MEP for the North East of England Stephen Hughes has been made Vice-President of the Party of European Socialists the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.

You may recall that Stephen Hughes is the MEP who led the charge to end the UK's opt-out from the Working Time Directive - trying to link it with teenage pregnancy when he told the Today programme,

"I think another useful study might be to look at the correlation between very long working time in Britain and teenage pregnancy, social dysfunction; a whole range of social indices that might well suffer as a consequence of the long working hours in Britain."

Could this be his promotion for trying to kill the opt-out?