The new rules address cases of misclassification of platform workers and ease the way for such workers to be reclassified as employees, guaranteeing easier access to their rights as employees under EU law. The agreement also includes provisions that will better protect platform workers’ personal data and increase transparency on how algorithm systems are used to take decisions in the workplace.

Ensuring greater social protection for self-employed people has been the subject of much policy debate in recent years. In 2019, the Council of the European Union adopted a recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. Sudden reductions in income during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of many self-employed workers. Using data from the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey, this report examines the working conditions of different groups of self-employed people.

Today, at the Val Duchesse Social Partners Summit, the European Commission, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU and European social partners signed a ‘Tripartite Declaration for a Thriving European Social Dialogue’.

In this pilot project, Eurofound successfully established the feasibility of, and piloted, an EU-wide database of minimum pay rates contained in collective agreements related to low-paid workers. A conceptual and measurement framework was devised, a total of 692 collective agreements – related to 24 low-paid sectors of interest – were selected to be ‘fully coded’ and representative data on negotiated minimum pay were compiled for 24 EU Member States. Based on more than 3,202 renewal texts, time series of collectively agreed minimum rates were created from 2015 to 2022 for 19 countries.