Member states slam door shut on gig work directive

The Belgian Presidency failed to garner the necessary support from member states to agree a new platform work directive on Friday (16 February), effectively shelving the proposal, after more than two years of negotiations.

The platform work file, first introduced in December 2021, was hailed as the EU’s first attempt to regulate the growing gig economy.

Negotiators from the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Belgium Presidency of the Council of the EU had agreed to a watered-down version of the directive in early February – but that just wasn’t enough to get member states’ stamp of approval at Friday’s vote.

“Unfortunately, the necessary QMV [qualified majority voting] wasn’t found. We believe that this directive, aiming to be an important step towards for this workforce [platform workers] has come a long way,” the Belgian Presidency of the Council said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Greece, Germany and Estonia – home to taxi service Bolt – said they would abstain. France, meanwhile, made clear it could not support the deal as it stood.

This in itself was enough to tank the file, through what is known as a ‘blocking minority’.

Under a qualified majority voting (QMV) system, a file is adopted in the Council when at least 55% of member states, representing at least 65% of the total EU population, vote in favour. However, a ‘blocking minority’ can occur when four or more member states choose to either vote against, or abstain.

Until the very last moment, key swaying states, including France, Italy and Spain kept their cards close to their chest.

A tour de table to get member states’ views was initially planned for late morning, then postponed several hours – before it became evident the numbers weren’t there.

In effect, this means the file has little to no hope of being renegotiated in time before parliamentary work ends, and the EU election campaign begins.

“We’ll now consider the next steps,” the Belgian Presidency posted on X – though what these next steps entail is very blurry.

“I’ve absolutely no idea what these next steps could amount to,” an EU diplomat told Euractiv.

Of all, it’s a significant blow for Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, in charge of the file, as he is set to lead the social democrat (S&D) charge during the elections, but will have nothing to show voters on gig work regulation.

Is the platform work directive dead?

The EU’s Platform Workers Directive is on life-support and might be split in two after European governments voted down a provisional agreement found in December. “Better no deal than a bad deal,” sources told Euractiv.

Rock and a hard place

A first provisional agreement had been found in mid-December in interinstitutional negotiations – known as ‘trilogues’ – but that was immediately shut down by member states.

The Belgians, who took the Council of the EU’s presidency over from the Spaniards on 1 January, gave the text another go, but quickly found themselves stuck trying to respond to the concerns of France, a key file sceptic which adamantly refused to move beyond the Council’s July version of the text.

Under this version, the threshold to action the legal presumption of employment – a new mechanism to help reclassify self-employed platform workers that should actually be full-time employees – was brought up, and the application scope was reduced.

Both the Commission and the Parliament refused to agree to this approach, calling instead for a more ambitious mechanism.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the Belgians circulated yet another text in late January which effectively watered down the legal presumption to no more than a number of high-level principles, hoping for an eleventh-hour deal.

The text, which was approved at trilogues on 8 February, required member states to create a rebuttable legal presumption in their national systems – without going into the details of how it should be applied.

It also dedicated an entire chapter to algorithmic management in the workplace – one of the less politically contentious parts of the text.

It enshrined a complete prohibition on the processing of certain sets of data, including psychological state, religious affiliation, or sexuality, but also private conversations or any information while the person is not performing platform work, in essence going beyond the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

But this text is what EU ambassadors said no to on Friday – most likely kicking the file down the road to the next legislature.

France leads charge to rewrite platform workers' rulebook

Last month, a coalition of EU countries blocked the provisional agreement on the Platform Workers Directive. But while the Belgian EU Council presidency wants to use the political deal as the starting point for future discussion, Paris wants a more comprehensive file reshaping.

Reactions

“What a disgrace!,” a statement from the social democrat (S&D) parliamentary group reads – also home to file rapporteur Elisabetta Gualmini. “Liberal and conservative forces in France, Estonia, Greece and Germany wasted a historic opportunity to protect all workers in the digital era.”

“Emmanuel Macron went all the way to defend Uber interests, and deprived EU workers of more social rights,” The Left EU lawmaker Leïla Chaibi, who has spearheaded the fight for stronger gig work regulation in the European Parliamant, told Euractiv.

She said she is “stunned” by the outcome, and warned that platform workers will be “very, very, very mad”.

Meanwhile, France denies “any accusations of being either ultraliberal or eurosceptic,” a French diplomatic source told Euractiv.

The latest text version had two critical flaws, the diplomat said: the wording’s legal blur, which would have caused transposition issues, and the absence of any harmonisation in the application of the legal presumption between member states.

“But we are convinced a deal is still possible,” they added.

In a statement, MoveEU, the on-demand mobility lobby group, said today’s rejection “confirms that Member States do not want to approve a deal that would have created more legal uncertainty for the hundreds of thousands of ride-hailing drivers in Europe,” and called for an end to all negotiations until after EU elections.

“Today EU countries recognised that the proposed text directly contradicted what platform workers say they want”, an Uber spokesperson said.

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

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