On 11 March 2024, the EU’s Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) adopted the compromise proposal from the trilogue procedure on the Directive to improve working conditions in platform work.
Greece and Estonia gave up their previous abstention and voted in favour of the compromise which will probably lead to a "national presumption of employment" in which the EU member states keep the process, including the classification criteria of employment, in their own hands.
Only France and Germany did not agree - according to officials in Brussels, an unprecedented event. Germany abstained once again due to a lack of agreement within the traffic light government in Berlin, much to the regret of the Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil, who was present.
Even if it became clear in the debate in the Council that many states would have liked a more uniform regulation around the gig economy and bogus self-employment the will to bring the procedure to a conclusion after more than two years of negotiations and before the European elections was ultimately greater.
The EU Commission presented the first draft in December 2021. One year later, the EU Parliament made its own proposal. With a compromise proposal from the Council, the trilogue negotiations between the Council, Commission and Parliament began in summer 2023 and failed in December. In February 2024, the Belgian Council Presidency proposed to waive a core part of the directive, the EU wide criteria for the presumption of bogus self-employment, and to leave this to the member states.
APSCo Deutschland and APSCo Global took part in the discussion. We have long campaigned for more legal certainty for the self-employed in the EU, to encourage flexible highly skilled contractors, which we know drives productivity.
For this reason, we have put forward clear proposals and demands, including a clear definition of a digital labour platform, the exclusion of highly paid and experienced self-employed workers from the Directive, and a suspensive effect of the objection and appeal procedure in order not to classify too many self-employed persons as employees too quickly. You can find ourposition paper here.
The European Parliament still has to give its approval - but Brussels expects a majority. The EU-member countries will then have two years to implement the new rule.
Given the broad definition of 'platform' and the multiplicity of such platforms within a single supply chain to supply a worker, we anticipate additional administrative burden for our members in the EU and, sourcing into the EU. However, APSCo takes some comfort that the EU are not now rewriting the rulebook around employment status, and we will continue to push for clarity around application of the directive to platforms used in regulated highly skilled staffing supply chains, which were never the intended target of the legislators.
