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Member states reached a political agreement on Monday on European legislation intended to strengthen the rights of workers on digital platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo, after several weeks of blockage, 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.
Strengthened social protection
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 that they had found a political agreement on the directive. But this compromise was criticized by several countries, including France, and its adoption did not find a majority during a meeting of ambassadors nine days later.
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 employment ministers in Brussels on Monday, where a majority of member states supported the compromise.
“Legal uncertainty”
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,” said the organization’s president, Aurelien Pozzana. “This text, although it constitutes an improvement compared to previous versions, does not lead to a harmonized approach throughout the EU, which creates even more legal uncertainty” for workers, he believes.
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