Two years ago, we warned in this newsletter about the risks of Uber monopolising the food delivery sector. Uber had just purchased its first shares in Delivery Hero, the German multinational which owns 60 delivery brands all over the world, including Glovo, Foodora and E-Food in Europe.
Two years on, it appears that our fears were justified. Uber has increased its stake in Delivery Hero to 37%, making it the company's largest investor. The Silicon Valley giant has already had one takeover bid rebuffed, and appears to be preparing for a second one.
Uber's attempted takeover of Delivery Hero comes in a very specific context. When Prosus, the Dutch investment company which is majority owned by South African tech firm Naspers, bought Just Eat Takeaway last year, Prosus was at that point the largest shareholder in Delivery Hero. The European Commission stepped in and told Prosus they could own Just Eat or Delivery Hero, but not both, as the two companies competed with each other across various European markets and so they were at risk of breaching anti-trust rules. The Commission required the company to sell down its stake in Delivery Hero to "single digits" if it wanted to complete the takeover of Just Eat.
At this point, Prosus contacted the European Commission, asking the Brussels bureaucrats to drop the obligation to sell down its stake in Delivery Hero. Prosus had never been happy about the EU's anti-monopoly stance, arguing that the Commission was squandering an opportunity. The EU had said it would follow the advice of Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, who wrote in a report for the Commission on competitiveness in 2024 that it should ease-off on its merger controls to allow for the creation of "European champions" in tech, like the US and China have.
"[The Draghi report] says we need local champions," Fabricio Bloisi, head of Prosus, told the FT. "This is not the mindset of the European Commission today; the mindset is ‘let’s look at our competition internally’. I think this is a big mistake. I think the European mindset has to change, or we are to become irrelevant in terms of technology.”
In a classic Brussels fudge, the Commission did not end the requirement on Prosus to sell its stake in Delivery Hero to single digits, but it did extend the timeline for the company to do so, until October 11. According to reports, Prosus is now going to use this extra breathing space to temporarily increase its stake in Delivery Hero, in order to block Uber's takeover bid.
Coincidentally, this transatlantic corporate power battle was ongoing when the European Commission published its "tech sovereignty" strategy document last week, following heightened concerns about European dependency on American Big Tech. Speaking about the strategy, EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said the Commission "want to make sure that nobody has a so-called kill switch possibility". It was of course Uber which made the notion of a kill switch famous, when it used such a ploy to shutdown all of its servers before European regulators could get access to the company's data, as revealed by the Uber Files.
Now, the American originator of the kill switch is on the precipice of monopolising European food delivery. The company now owns a greater share in Delivery Hero than Prosus ever did, and its current stake already gives it a great deal of power in one of its most important European rivals. For example, Uber can already block any significant changes at Delivery Hero. It can also call an AGM. If it was necessary for Prosus to sell its shares down to single digits, then why can Uber - which is already the largest player in the European food delivery market - own a 37% stake?
We asked the European Commission whether they would initiate an anti-trust investigation into Uber's interest in Delivery Hero, and were told that they could not "speculate" because "it is always up to the parties in a merger to assess whether they need to notify a merger to the Commission". So the Commission will only consider getting involved at the point of a merger actually happening. One would have thought that the Commission would intervene in those circumstances, but let's remember that we are in the Donald Trump-era: all business dealings are potential geopolitical weapons. Uber could easily use its leverage with the White House to put pressure on the European Commission to allow a takeover of Delivery Hero to go through.
This matters for food delivery couriers because monopolisation is not good for workers. When companies don't have competition, workers have nowhere else to turn, giving them "monopsony power" to drive down pay and conditions. Europe already has a highly concentrated food delivery market, with just four players operating in multiple countries - Uber Eats, DoorDash (which owns Deliveroo and Wolt, and is also interested in buying Delivery Hero), Just Eat and Delivery Hero - and in most countries just two or three of these companies are present.
We should be suspicious about the idea that a Prosus takeover of Delivery Hero offers a genuine alternative to an Uber takeover. Since taking the reins at Just Eat, Prosus has been busy dismantling what remains of employment protections for it's couriers, either by moving to the same bogus self-employed model as the other platforms, as they have done in Austria, or by hiring riders through shady sub-contractors, as is the case in Germany. Whether it's European or American Big Tech (or "local champion," to use the European lingo), these giant companies do not operate in the interests of their workers.
In an industry with narrow margins and limited capacity for further automation (streets full of food delivery robots are a pipe dream), companies like Uber and Prosus were always going to turn to merger and acquisition as the primary means of growth. But what's good for capital is not necessarily good for workers, nor customers. The European Commission would do well to keep that in mind when it is weighing up whether to render its own anti-trust rules meaningless, or not.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
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Gig Economy news round-up |
GENERAL STRIKE IN PORTUGAL AGAINST 'WORK XXI' REFORM: Portuguese workers held a general strike on Wednesday [3 June] against the Government's proposed 'Work XXI' labour reform, which includes weakening platform work laws. The CGTP union called the strike, with reports of schools closed, transport at a stand still and hospitals operating at minimum capacity. The government of the centre-right Democratic Alliance has pushed forward with the proposed law despite no agreement with unions after six months of negotiations. The law includes a wide range of changes which weaken workers' rights, but the part of the law that is most directly relevant to platform work includes a partial transposition of the EU Platform Work Directive, which - if passed - would weaken the legal presumption of employment which is currently in place since a 2023 law change, making it harder for platform workers to access employment re-classification. As it stands, the government said that they will continue to pursue the labour reform as before, with 18 June scheduled for the first reading of the Bill in parliament. Read more here. 1 IN 4 ONLINE PLATFORM WORKERS FACE ROBO-FIRING RISK: New research on online platform work in Europe has found that one in four face the risk of immediate suspension or termination of their account, a practise commonly dubbed 'robo-firings'. The research by EU statistics agency Eurofound surveyed thousands of online platform workers across Europe. Unlike geographically-based platform workers, online platform workers are not location dependent, with most working from home. Online platform work roles include software engineering, secretarial services, teaching, content moderation and 'micro-work', where workers carry out short digital tasks to train and test AI systems. The survey found that most online platform workers (54.5%) do the work as a side job, with their main income coming from elsewhere. Most (59%) work primarily for clients in the country they live. Average annual income was €20,000, but this varied greatly within and between countries. Perhaps the most worrying data came from the research on algorithmic management. As well as 25% being exposed to robo-firings, two in three online platform workers are evaluated based on leaderboards, while more than 70% are exposed to a points based system of evaluation, suggesting rates of 'gamification' are high. Systems of algorithmic control were especially comprehensive in AI services and software development, while they were lowest for medical consultations. Read more here. UBER CEO ADMITS LESS DRIVERS IN CITIES WITH ROBO-TAXIS: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company was cutting back on the number of drivers it was hiring on it's app in US cities where robo-taxis are in full-swing, adding to concerns that automation would undermine the livelihoods of drivers. Khosrowshahi claimed that the move to limit driver sign-ups was protecting "drivers who are [already] in-market", but that was contested by Liza Ramsey, an Uber driver and member of the Atlanta Rideshare Drivers Union, who said her income had dropped by a third since Waymo robo-taxis had started operating in the city. The admission comes as Uber announced it would be launching its first German robo-taxis in Munich, in a partnership with Israeli AI company Autobrains. The Munich launch is still subject to regulatory approval. Read more here. ACCOUNTANCY FIRM KPMG QUESTIONS FINANCIAL VIABILITY OF GLOVO: There are "significant doubts" about the financial viability of Spanish food delivery platform Glovo, the company's auditors have found. Accountancy giant KPMG has approved Glovo's 2023 and 2024 accounts two years late, which is itself illegal, and found that there are "significant doubts about the company's ability to continue as a company in operation" due to the high number of fines it still owes the Spanish Government for years of operating a bogus self-employed model, as well as the cost of it's current labour model, where it employs all of its riders. KPMG also found that the way the company counts its expenditure is a significant under-estimation and that the company did not provide evidence to justify €81.5 million on it's balance sheet. Glovo refused to abide by the Spanish Government Rider Law, which established a general presumption of employment in the food delivery sector in 2021, continuing to hire riders on a self-employed basis. This led to the company paying €490 million in fines to the Spanish labour inspectorate between 2021 and 2024, KPMG found, while still having a further €95 million to pay. Glovo eventually caved in to the government's demands, and began hiring all of its workers on employment contracts from July 2025, albeit many are hired via sub-contractors. Read more here.
Have we missed something important? You can help keep us informed about what's going in the gig economy in Europe by e-mailing GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
Digital Platform Observatory |
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Lena Simet and Anna Bacciarelli write for Foreign Policy in Focus about the International Labour Convention on platform work in Geneva, which is ongoing. |
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Fairwork's 2026 platform work ratings for Germany will be launched at an event in Berlin on Friday 26 June from 10am to 1pm (in German). For full details and to register click here.
P-Will Cost Action is organising a conference in Prague on 30 June titled 'Mapping the Transformation: Intersectional Analysis of Platform Work and the Shifting Labor Landscape'. It is a hybrid event. Click here for details. |
Contact project co-ordinator Ben Wray at GEP@BraveNewEurope.com with news, events, ideas, feedback...whatever you think might be useful.
And if you like the Gig Economy Project newsletter, why not get your friends and colleagues to subscribe? Here's the link. |
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