We have been working on a re-launch of the Digital Platform Observatory with the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) for some time, and now it's here.
The Digital Platform Observatory provides three types of information on platform work in Europe: legal cases, national developments (strikes, protests, collective agreements, etc), and the Platform Work Directive (PWD). Go to the map on the Observatory and click on any EU country, you will find an update with the latest on the transposition of PWD there.
Let's take a quick tour of Europe using the Observatory to see what the progress is with PWD up to this point. We are after all now less than six months until the 2 December 2026 deadline for transposition.
Luxembourg has perhaps been the fastest to move forward, having published a Bill to transpose PWD all the way back in February. The Bill proposes a legal presumption of employment based on 13 criteria, in which three of 13 are needed to trigger the presumption. Perhaps the strongest part of Luxembourg's proposal is that the labour inspectorate can pursue employment re-classification via an administrative procedure, meaning it is not always necessary to go to the labour court to activate the presumption.
We turn to Portugal for the most recent update. The centre-right government proposed a broad labour reform in July of last year called 'Work XXI'. The proposal was heavily criticised by unions, with the UGT describing it as “cuts in rights in central areas for workers and their representatives”. On platform work specifically, Work XXI proposed weakening the criteria for the legal presumption of employment that was created in 2023, to make it harder for platform workers to trigger the presumption. There have been negotiations between the government and unions over this for months, but the result has been that the unions concerns have been dismissed and a slightly augmented proposal from Work XXI has now been submitted to the Portuguese Parliament. PWD was not supposed to be used as a launch pad to weaken platform workers' rights, but that's what the Portuguese Government is trying to do.
We also have news from Italy. The Italian Government published the 1 May Decree which included Article 12 proposing a general presumption of employment in the platform economy “when there are indications of control or external direction exercised". This Article may be subject to change because the Decree has to be turned into an Act within three months, so keep following the Observatory for new updates from Rome.
Heading eastwards, we arrive in Slovakia, where the government has drafted a proposal for a general legal presumption of employment when "the person performing platform work or a representative of platform workers presents facts from which it may reasonably be inferred that the platform work is performed in a relationship of subordination to the digital labour platform or intermediary and under their instructions". The platform and/or intermediary then has the chance to rebut this presumption in court proceedings. This proposal still has to go before the Slovak Parliament.
We will finish in the small island-state of Malta, which already established in 2022 what has been described by labour law academic Christina Hießl as a "zero-burden" general legal presumption of employment in the platform economy. The strength of this approach is that it reduces the legal and bureaucratic barriers for platform workers to challenge bogus self-employment to an absolute minimum. Malta's law reads as follows:
"When considering the employment status of a person performing digital platform work, it shall be presumed that there is an employment relationship and that the digital labour platform for whom the platform work is provided, or the work agency who assigns such person to or places him at the disposal of any digital labour platform, as the case may be, is the employer and that the provisions of the Act and of the regulations or orders issued thereunder apply to that relationship.”
It should be obvious from this whistle-stop transposition tour of Europe that different governments are doing different things and the key question of employment status in the platform economy is probably not heading towards any sort of consistent, European-wide unified position, despite that being the original intention of the Directive. But there's still a long way to go, let's see how it all comes out of the wash in coming months.
You can help keep us informed about what is happening in the world of platform work where you are: just drop us an email at GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. Even if it's just sending us a link to a news article or a social media post, it's all helpful so we can keep a track of what's going on.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
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Gig Economy news round-up |
BOTH UBER AND DOORDASH TRYING TO BUY DELIVERY HERO: Uber and its rival DoorDash are both considering purchasing Delivery Hero, in a race to monopolise the food delivery sector. Uber placed a bid last week that valued Delivery Hero at around €11.5 billion, but it was rejected. The FT reports that some investors are holding out for a bid that would value the German multi-national delivery company at €13 billion. DoorDash, the US food delivery platform that owns Deliveroo and Wolt in Europe, have held exploratory talks with Delivery Hero over a takeover. DoorDash is also considering buying specific Delivery Hero brands: Talabat and HungerStation in the Middle East and Yemeksepeti in Turkey. Uber became the largest shareholder in Delivery Hero two weeks ago when it bought shares from Prosus, the Dutch tech company which owns Just Eat. As part of the European Commission's conditions for Prosus' takeover of Just Eat, it had to sell down its shares in Delivery Hero for anti-trust reasons. Prosus has asked the European Commission to end this requirement to sell the shares in recent days. An Uber or DoorDash takeover of the company would also raise regulatory concerns around monopolisation, since the two American companies are among the largest players in Europe's food delivery sector already. Jitse Groen, founder and former CEO of Just Eat, commented that it was "ironic" that the European Commission's anti-trust policies "end up strengthening competitors from other continents". Delivery Hero's founder and CEO Niklas Östberg announced last week that he would stand down by March 2027, after coming under investor pressure. Read more here. WOLT TO BAN THE USE OF SUBSTITUTES IN FINLAND: Wolt will stop allowing food delivery couriers with an account on its platform from using a substitute to carry out the work on their behalf, in a move aimed at cracking down on illegal work. Wolt anticipates that the change, which will come in from 1 August, will lead to thousands of substitute riders applying for their own account. The Finnish-founded firm, which is now owned by US food delivery company DoorDash, linked the change to the upcoming transposition of the EU Platform Work Directive in the country, which is expected to tighten rules on the use of substitutes in platform work. The substitution clause has been criticised as making it easy to facilitate illegal work on the platform, with the account holder typically extracting a rent from the substitute - which is often an undocumented migrant - for use of the account. Wolt said that the move was just the latest step in its efforts to clamp down on illegal working on its platform, with the company opening a reporting channel for riders and creating a unit focused on tackling the issue. Read more here. UBER OPERATIONS CHIEF CAN'T JUSTIFY AI SPEND OVER JOBS: Uber's operations chief Andrew Macdonald has said that it is becoming impossible to justify the company's spend on AI, especially when it comes at the expense of hiring staff. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told an Earnings Call earlier this month that the company had cut back on hiring workers to make budget room for AI spend. But now his own executives appear to be questioning that, after Chief Technical Officer Neppalli Naga said that the company had already used up its annual budget on the generative AI chatbot Claude by April. Macdonald said that revelation led to soul searching amongst the Silicon Valley firm's top players, as there was little evidence that the AI spend was boosting productivity. "That link is not there yet, right?" he said. "I think maybe implicitly there is more that is getting shipped, but it's very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and, 'Okay, now we're actually producing 25% more useful consumer features.'" Read more here. BOLT SAY THE EU PLATFORM WORK DIRECTIVE WON'T CHANGE ANYTHING IN ESTONIA: Multi-modality transport platform Bolt believes that the transposition of the EU Platform Work Directive will make little difference to its operations in its home country of Estonia. A draft law has been sent out for consultation and Bolt's head of public policy for the Baltics, Sirli Heinsoo, said that all of its riders are currently hired on "an entrepreneur account" and will continue to do so after the law is enacted. Heinsoo explained that the reason for this was because current legislation in Estonia states that if you can choose the time, place and manner of conducting work then you are self-employed, and the draft new law makes reference to the current legislation. Meanwhile, Tallinn University of Technology researcher Kaire Holts has said that the debate over transposition in the Baltics company had been completely dominate by Bolt. "We see a very strong bias or very strong lobbying, particularly from one Estonian platform company," she said. "There have been no representatives of platform workers involved in the discussions at all. That entirely different input, that other perspective, is completely missing." Minister of Economic Affairs and Industry Erkki Keldo said that the government would implement the directive at the minimum required level. Read more here. UBER EATS AND LONDON FIRE BRIGADE TO WARN RIDERS OVER E-BIKE FIRE RISKS: Uber Eats and the London Fire Brigade (LFB) will run a joint campaign to warn riders about the dangers of e-bike and e-scooter related fires, after a record number in the UK capital last year. The lithium-ion batteries used to charge e-bikes and e-scooters can be a major fire hazard, with 56 fires in London caused by e-bike and e-scooter charging in 2025 alone. Since 2023, three people have died in fires related to e-bikes. The campaign will include providing information and training to riders via the Uber Eats platform. LFB deputy assistant commissioner Richard Field warned riders against buying cheap charging products, saying "if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is". As food delivery couriers are hired on a self-employed basis in the UK, they are responsible for buying their own work equipment. UberEats' general manager for the UK, Merve Basci, said: "While we encourage the transition to electric travel, it is essential that anyone using e-bikes does so in line with the highest safety standards." 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. |
Trade Union Guide to PWD: Now available in French, Spanish and Italian |
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You may remember that in early March we published a trade union guide to the transposition of the Platform Work Directive with the ETUC. The guide is now available in French, Spanish and Italian, as well as English. |
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Podcast: Uber, Deliveroo and You!
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) legal officer Monica Tepfer looks at the big legal battle in the world of platform work ahead of the ILO convention in Geneva next month. |
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Study finds that whereas workers on standard employment contracts experienced less workplace strain when they had higher pay and more work-life balance, in the gig economy the algorithm ensures that the worker can never relax. |
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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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