EU deal on new gig-workers rules unlikely before June elections

France couldn’t assist the textual content, whereas Greece, Germany, and Estonia determined to abstain from the vote, EUobserver was in a position to verify.

“They selected massive platforms’ financial pursuits over European residents, the European social mannequin and the way forward for work,” the S&D group within the parliament account, to which the rapporteur of this file belongs, posted on social media instantly after the deal fell aside.

The parliament had already lowered its expectations for this directive (making the textual content a lot much less bold than at the start of negotiations) to be able to attain an settlement throughout this mandate.

Nonetheless, this was not sufficient for these 4 nations, a few of which requested for extra time to check the proposed textual content, first unveiled by the European Fee again in December 2021.

The scenario is much like that below the Spanish EU Council presidency, when a primary provisional settlement was reached to reclassify some 5.5 million employees from self-employed to ‘workers’, enormously enhancing their rights and social protections, solely to crumble on the Council degree over every week later.

Certainly, though Spain voted in favour of this provisional settlement, it issued a press release making clear that some provisions of the textual content “don’t totally reply to what we perceive ought to have been the content material of this directive”.

For instance, Madrid mentions the central ingredient of the directive, the presumption of employment, describing it as weak and unambitious and opposite to what was defended by the Spanish delegation.

Commerce unions additionally reacted to the brand new failure to succeed in a last settlement that would give higher working situations to an estimate of 28 million platform employees.

“This exhibits that implementing the presumption of employment relationship and the reversal of burden of proof at nationwide degree is extra pressing than ever,” confederal secretary on the European Commerce Union Confederation (ETUC) Luvoci Voet careworn in a press release.

The Belgian presidency of the EU rapidly introduced on X (previously Twitter) that the EU ambassadors had failed to succeed in a professional majority on Friday afternoon.

“We imagine that this directive, aiming to be an essential step ahead for this workforce, has come a good distance,” the Belgians posted on their social media channels.

“We are going to now contemplate the following steps,” they added — though there may be unlikely to be sufficient time to renegotiate a brand new textual content earlier than the upcoming EU elections.