Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D, Italian) is the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the Directive on platform workers, which was the subject of a trilogue agreement on 12 December with the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council (see EUROPE 13313/11).
While the Member States are due to vote on the matter on Friday 22 December, even if, according to certain sources, the Presidency could still decide not to seek confirmation of the agreement, given that the fate of this deliberation remained uncertain on 21 December at the time of going to press (see EUROPE 13319/3), it is particularly concerned about the announcement already made public by the French government that it would not support the agreement.
French Minister of Labour Olivier Dussopt told the French Senate on 20 December that the agreement does not respect the EU Council’s mandate of 12 June and opens the door to “massive reclassifications” of self-employed platform workers.
In particular, he criticised the return to a system of two necessary criteria (indicating a platform’s control over a worker) out of five to trigger the presumption of salaried status, as opposed to “three out of seven” in the EU Council mandate (see EUROPE 13199/1).
Arguments that are “not correct”, responds the Italian, who called on French President Emmanuel Macron not to become “the killer of the social Europe”. In general terms, she is calling on the reluctant Member States, of which there were seven on 15 December, to make no mistake about the content of the agreement.
Informal discussions were taking place on Thursday to try to reach a qualified majority, while Germany’s expected abstention and a negative vote from Paris, as well as opposition from a number of other delegations, would create a blocking minority (see EUROPE 13316/20). (Interview by Solenn Paulic)
Agence Europe - French Minister of Labour Olivier Dussopt was clear on Wednesday about his opposition to the agreement reached on 12 December. Are you worried?
Elisabetta Gualmini - Of course I’m worried; I listened to what the Minister said and I do not share his view, for example, that the agreement reached is a long way from the mandate of the Council of the EU. This is not true. Nor is it true to say that the agreement will lead to massive reclassification of self-employed workers. The self-employed will continue to be self-employed!
We have simply put in place guidelines for the bogus self-employed. And I want to tell him that we are not going against the market or competition or anything else. I find it extremely terrifying that a pro-European force like Emmanuel Macron’s party, which is also one of the most passionate promoters of the European Union, should in some way become the killer of the social Europe.
Some other member countries, apart from France, did not yet seem in a position to give their approval on Thursday. How can you convince them?
Yes, we know that other countries may not support our negotiations. I’m thinking, for example, of Hungary and the Baltic countries such as Estonia and Lithuania. The Spanish Presidency is in contact with the delegations and will try to get them to come ‘on board’, and I also hope that France will do the same.
Right up to the last minute, we must try to convince the countries and above all explain its content, because we really do have a very balanced text and there are a lot of misunderstandings.
In particular, this text promotes fair competition between platforms, because there are already multinationals, platforms that hire workers and provide a lot of social rights, and then suffer from unfair competition from other multinationals! So it’s a question of establishing a balanced general framework to allow all platforms to operate on the market, and I don’t see why that’s a problem.
Nor is anyone talking about the most innovative part of the Directive, which is not the part on the status of workers (employees or self-employed, Editor’s note)! There is an obsession with this subject, but the very important part on the algorithmic management of work, linked to the AI Act, which promotes transparency and, above all, human oversight, is completely new for the European labour market.
We have an incredibly large political majority in Parliament, so the problem really lies with the EU Council, when we are talking about improving the situation of almost 30 million platform workers today, who will be 45 million in a few years’ time, according to the Commission’s forecasts.
We’re talking about a huge category of workers, often in precarious employment. France’s opposition is therefore completely incomprehensible.
If it fails on Friday, will Parliament be prepared to rework its text?
We will continue to work with the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council, which will enable us to reach agreement on this Directive before the end of the parliamentary term. We absolutely must move forward and I already hope that everything will go well tomorrow, but we will continue, because we are talking about a text that constitutes one of the two pillars of social Europe for this term of office along with minimum wage. I really hope we can have both.
In recent days, have you again felt strong pressure from lobbies and platforms, as you already denounced last year during the vote on Parliament’s mandate (see EUROPE 13075/14)?
We have come under enormous pressure from the platforms. Throughout the negotiations, we were inundated with emails, phone calls and proposed amendments. And this is another point that Emmanuel Macron must take into consideration, because I think that the countries that may vote against on Friday could give the impression that they are conditioned by the lobbies and somehow prefer platforms and multinationals to workers.