On pre-Christmas Friday [Dec. 22, 2023], the Council of Europe refused to support an agreement on the Platform Labor Directive. The document had been worked on in the European Commission since Pandemic, and the latest arrangements were conducted intensively in recent months, when Spain assumed the EU Presidency.
Below is a translation of Ben Wray’s text, in which he outlines all the political nuances of the Directive. The article was produced by the Gig Economy Project
No one should be surprised at this outcome. Let’s remember, this deal was negotiated on the Council side by Yolanda Díaz, almost certainly the most left-wing Minister of Labour in the EU and the only one to have actually introduced a general presumption of employment for food delivery couriers at the national level. Díaz broke with normal practise of seeking a mandate from the Council first, and instead sought to agree a deal with EP interlocutors and then convince the Council. It didn’t work. The balance of forces on the Council has always been against Spain and the six or seven other states which support an effective presumption of employment in the platform economy, a group which formed a ‘blocking minority’ on the Council to prevent an extremely pro-platform lobby proposal under the Czech Presidency in December 2022. Nothing changed in the past two weeks to shift that arithmetic.
What is true is that Díaz had managed to secure the support of almost all of the European Parliament for this deal, except the far-right. Even the liberal Renew group, which French President Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Renaissance’ party is part of, enthusiastically backed the provisional agreement. Also, the European Commission were on board, with Nicolas Schmit, European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, stating that the deal would “ensure platform workers, such as drivers and riders, receive the social and labour rights they are entitled to, without sacrificing the flexibility of the platform business model.”
Macron was clearly unmoved by this. His Labour Minister, Olivier Dussopt, already announced on Wednesday that they would oppose the deal. The French Government has never hidden the fact that it is opposed to employment status in the platform economy, explicitly making the case at Council meetings for its ‘social dialogue’ model as an alternative route to social protections for gig workers. It’s clear that France will only permit a presumption of employment that it believes is sufficiently toothless to avoid platform workers being made employees on mass.
However, it has to be said that France hardly stands alone. Eleven other member-states also opposed the deal on Friday, mostly an array of liberal-conservative governments with similar ideological leanings to Macron, with a couple of far-right administrations for good measure (Italy and Hungary). Somewhat ridiculously, Germany continues to abstain, as it has done throughout the process, despite the fact the government is led by the Social Democratic Party.
The Belgian Presidency will take up the task of trying to find a Platform Work Directive agreement in the new year. No one in favour of a strong presumption of employment should expect the text of the Directive to get any better from here. While the Belgian Government has been in the left ‘blocking minority’ group on the Council, it is likely to be much more willing to compromise than Spain. Belgium introduced a presumption of employment in the platform economy on 1 January 2022 which was so badly written that it has failed to make even one gig worker an employee. It would not be surprising if something similar was served up in the few months which remain for a Platform Work Directive deal to be struck.
Finding a compromise between states with fundamentally opposing points of view was always likely to be tricky. It’s possible that there will be no deal before the European Parliament elections in May, in which case the process would have to begin again, under what polls suggest will be a more right-wing European Parliament. While most European workers now start a couple of weeks of paid holiday, gig workers do not, and they would be well-advised not to expect the EU’s political institutions to change that reality any time soon.
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