After several weeks of blockage, the member states of the European Union (EU) reached a political agreement by qualified majority, Monday March 11, on European legislation intended to strengthen the rights of workers on digital platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo , announced the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU.
“Better working conditions for home meal delivery workers!” Ministers have just approved the compromise text on the directive relating to platform workers. This will improve the rights and conditions of more than 28.5 million Europeans working in » this sector, she said on X.
The directive, as proposed by the European Commission at the end of 2021, aimed to reclassify many people, meal delivery drivers or independent VTC drivers, as employees, in order to strengthen their social protection. It also had to harmonize the criteria for this requalification on a European scale.
The European Parliament and the Twenty-Seven announced, on December 13, 2023, that they had reached a political agreement on the directive. But this compromise was criticized by several countries, including France, and its adoption did not find a majority at a meeting of ambassadors nine days later.
Blocking of several countries including France and Germany
A political agreement was again announced in February, but the text was largely emptied of its substance. France and Germany blocked the text, with the support of Estonia and Greece. While the text presented in December created a presumption of employment on the basis of a series of criteria, the compromise adopted renounces this list of criteria, leaving member states to decide how to qualify workers.
The issue was put on the agenda of a meeting of labor ministers in Brussels on Monday, where a majority of member states supported the compromise. The lobby for on-demand mobility companies, Move EU, which counts Uber among its members, has expressed its dissatisfaction. “Move EU regrets that Member States have today approved the provisional agreement on the amended Platforms Directive”declared the president of the organization, Aurelien Pozzana.
“This text, although an improvement on previous versions, does not achieve a harmonized approach across the EU, which creates even more legal uncertainty” for workers, he adds. In a press release, Uber estimated for its part that “EU lawmakers today voted to maintain the status quo, with the status of platform workers continuing to be decided from country to country and court to court”.
“Uber is now calling on EU countries to introduce national laws to give platform workers the protection they deserve while maintaining the independence they prefer”says a company spokesperson.