Several European Union (EU) countries, including France, rejected on Friday December 22 legislation aimed at strengthening the rights of digital platform workers negotiated with the European Parliament, just nine days after the announcement of a agreement presented as a great social advance.
The legislation planned to reclassify as employees many people working for applications like Uber or Deliveroo, today considered self-employed.
The Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU, which coordinates the debates of the Twenty-Seven until the end of the year, announced that the necessary majority was not achievable, following a meeting of ambassadors member states in Brussels, European diplomats reported to Agence France-Presse. The support of fifteen out of twenty-seven member states, representing 65% of the EU population, was necessary. In addition to France, several countries have criticized the text, including Italy, Finland, Greece, Hungary and Sweden, reported a diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The French Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, explained on Wednesday that Paris considered the compromise too far from the position adopted by the Council in June, particularly on the question of “requalifications” which would have been too automatic and would have caused too much litigation. “When you move towards a directive which would allow massive requalifications, including of self-employed workers who value their self-employed status, we cannot support it”he declared during a session of questions to the government in the Senate.
New negotiations
However, a political agreement between the co-legislators was announced on December 13. The text will now have to be renegotiated. It will be up to the Belgian presidency, from January, to determine the course of action to follow to find a new compromise with MEPs. “I have full confidence in the Belgian presidency to bring this very important file to a successful conclusion”reacted the European Commissioner for Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, at the origin of the regulatory project.
While regulations on platforms are today very disparate among the Twenty-Seven, the new legislation intended to set identical rules at EU level to determine whether meal delivery people or VTC drivers working for large digital platforms must be considered employees.
The EU estimates “at least 5.5 million”, out of a total of almost 30 million, the number of platform workers today wrongly considered independent. The text unveiled last week established a series of criteria: the fact that a platform sets remuneration levels, supervises services remotely, does not allow its employees to choose their schedules or refuse missions, imposes the wearing a uniform, or even prohibited from working for other companies.
If at least two of these criteria were met, the platform had to be “alleged” employer and submit to labor law obligations (minimum salary, working hours, sick pay, safety standards, etc.) imposed by the legislation of the country concerned.