A coalition of transport, hotel, metal and engineering companies wrote to MEPs on Thursday 3 November to ask them to review what its representatives call the “excessive” definition of digital platforms, which could encompass all of their workers.
“We are not platforms”, they wrote, saying they are “deeply concerned” about discussions underway in the European Parliament to classify “essentially all businesses in the EU as ‘digital platforms’ and, hence, massively reclassify self-employed collaborators of any type of business as employees”.
This approach “completely deviates from the original purpose of the proposal, which was to correct speculative behaviour of several platforms which have avoided social and tax contributions to national schemes”.
The discussions in the European Parliament “are currently dominated by a radical trend, whereby businesses – such as truck, bus, and taxi operators, electrical equipment manufacturers, machinery repair/installation and equipment providers, or even hotels or restaurants – would be considered digital labour platforms”, when most of them have already played “their role as solid contributors to national budgets and social security schemes”.
These associations are calling on the European Parliament to tighten the definition of platforms and to exclude SMEs. The vote in the European Parliament Employment and Social Affairs Committee is scheduled for 30 November.
Link to the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/3wl (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)