EU reaches new agreement on digital platform workers law

The European Chamber and the Council of the European Union (EU)which brings together the Member States, reached a new agreement this Thursday on the directive that aims to improve working conditions on digital platforms such as Uber and reduce the number of false self-employed people.

The two EU co-legislators agreed today to determine at national level, in each Member State, whether platform employees are employed or self-employed.

In this way, the single list of criteria that would have served platforms throughout the EU to clarify whether employees were self-employed or not is removed from the law.

The European Parliament and the Council already reached a first agreement on the directive last year, but that agreement later needed to be confirmed by the European Parliament and the countries.

Among the Member States at the end of December, the necessary majority was not reached for the text to go ahead, so the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU and the Parliament have had to negotiate the directive again.

The main novelty of the pact reached today, which will also have to be endorsed by the States and the European Parliament, is that the criteria for deciding whether the worker is self-employed or employed are no longer fixed throughout the EU.

The first provisional agreement between the co-legislators established a list of five criteria and if at least two of them were met, the worker was considered to be employed and not self-employed.

In the new pact reached today, the list of criteria and the requirement that at least two be met to consider workers employed by others are eliminated from the directive.

“The legal presumption must be established at national level, respecting national procedural powers and at the same time guaranteeing minimum protection for the twenty-eight million workers in the EU”community sources indicated.

The European Parliament stressed in a statement that the new law “introduces a presumption of an employment relationship (as opposed to self-employment) that is activated when facts are present that indicate control and command, in accordance with national legislation and current collective agreements.”

He added that the jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice must also be taken into account.

“The directive obliges EU countries to establish a rebuttable legal presumption of employment at national level, with the aim of correcting the power imbalance between the platform and the person performing the work on the platform. By establishing an effective presumption, Member States will facilitate the correction of false self-employment. noted the Parliament.

It will be up to the platform to demonstrate that the contractual relationship is not employment, when it wants to refute the presumption.

The new rules guarantee that a worker on a digital platform cannot be fired “based on a decision made by an algorithm or an automated decision-making system”according to European Chamberwho added that platforms must guarantee human supervision of decisions “important” that directly affect workers.

In addition, platforms will be prohibited from processing certain types of employees’ personal data, such as those related to beliefs or private exchanges with colleagues.

Likewise, the law will force platforms to inform workers and their representatives about how their algorithms work and how a worker’s behavior affects the decisions made by automated systems.

Platforms will have to transmit information about the self-employed workers they hire to the competent national authorities and to workers’ representatives, such as unions.