No EU deal on platform work directive was reached on Friday (16 February), as 4 member states determined to not assist the newest settlement to enhance situations for gig employees in Europe — making the possibilities of a directive earlier than the elections unlikely.
Germany, France, Greece, and Estonia fashioned a blocking minority, stopping the EU Belgian presidency from reaching a professional majority to agree on a remaining textual content for platform employees.
France couldn’t assist the textual content, whereas Greece, Germany, and Estonia determined to abstain from the vote, EUobserver was in a position to affirm.
”They selected large 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 initially of negotiations) in an effort to attain an settlement throughout this mandate.
Nevertheless, this was not sufficient for these 4 nations, a few of which requested for extra time to review the proposed textual content, first unveiled by the European Fee again in December 2021.
The state of affairs 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 stage over per 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 absolutely 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 achieve a remaining 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 stage is extra pressing than ever,” confederal secretary on the European Commerce Union Confederation (ETUC) Luvoci Voet burdened in a press release.
The Belgian presidency of the EU shortly introduced on X (previously Twitter) that the EU ambassadors had failed to achieve a professional majority on Friday afternoon.
”We consider that this directive, aiming to be an necessary step ahead for this workforce, has come a good distance,” the Belgians posted on their social media channels.
”We’ll 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.