The institutions of the European Union have today reached an agreement to apply a 'European rider law' that covers an improvement in the conditions of workers on online platforms throughout the Twenty-Seven and prevents the proliferation of false self-employed workers. This is the second time that the pact has been closed, after some countries decided to veto its final approval at the end of last year.
“The Council and Parliament have just reached a provisional agreement on the Digital Platforms Directive. This agreement still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and the Member States. We hope that this is the first step towards better protection of platform workers,” reported the rotating Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU.
The European Commission proposed a law two years ago inspired in part by the Spanish one, which aspired to bring order and legal certainty to the almost 30 million workers of platforms such as Deliveroo or Globo, if a series of conditions were met. With the agreement reached this Thursday, the new directive eliminates the conditions and thresholds that had to be applied to be considered an employed worker, almost completely changing the Commission's proposal.
Now the condition is introduced that a worker is employed if there is a supervision and control mechanism by the platform, taking into account the national laws of each country and according to collective agreements, in the same way as Take into account the jurisprudence given by the Court of Justice of the European Union on the matter.
In 2020, European justice ruled that a ryder was a self-employed independent contractor and could not be considered a worker. In that specific case, the CJEU argued that the 'riders' can reject the assigned tasks, among other issues. Even so, the court left it up to the jurisdiction of each country to apply the concept of worker based on its own legislation.
According to the agreement, the directive will force European countries to establish a rebuttable legal presumption at the national level with the aim of correcting the possible power imbalance that exists between a platform and the rider. “By establishing a presumption, it will be easier for Member States to discern false self-employment.”
With the new directive, it will be the platform that will have to refute that the contractual relationship is not of an employment nature. In addition, platforms will be forced to apply greater transparency requirements so that workers are informed about their use of algorithms in human resources management, something pioneering. They will also not be allowed to store sensitive data about workers.
According to the pact reached in December, the institutions supported a series of conditions to ensure whether a worker is self-employed or an employee. In total, five were ruled, of which if two were met, a person could be considered to be employed. Among the points included the existence of maximum limits on the amount of money that workers can receive or whether there is supervision over the execution of the work. However, at the time when the States had to ratify the agreement, some expressed doubts, including France. Specifically, he was concerned that the criteria could be met too easily.
