On Thursday 24 November, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the digital platform workers directive, Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D, Italian), postponed the vote in the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment scheduled for 30 November.
The vote is now scheduled for 12 December, several sources said. The MEP needs to glean support within the EPP group, but also within Renew Europe, which is reportedly divided over the perceived hard-line approach of Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová (Slovak), the shadow rapporteur. The MEP has the support of the left-wing groups, but needs some support from the EPP and Renew Europe to get her text through. The latest talks concern the guarantees for truly self-employed workers and the non-automatic nature of the legal presumption of salaried status, as well as the scope of the directive, which the MEP wants to see applied to all activities under algorithmic management.
In a letter to the European Parliament on 24 November, Taxis4SmartMobility (T4SM) and the International Road Transport Union (IRU) warned MEPs of the risks that the Commission’s proposal “is posing to the taxi industry”.
The two associations call on the European Parliament “to sharpen the definition of digital labour platforms and to clarify the criteria establishing employment in order to ensure that the taxi sector does not fall within the scope of the directive”. The Italian MEP started with a rather long and open list of criteria.
The EU Council, for its part, remains divided into “three blocking minorities” on the text, according to one source. The Czech Presidency will make a new attempt on 30 November, after a first failure on 23 November (see EUROPE 13069/22). It is also ready, according to another source, to take the negotiation to the level of employment ministers on 8 December if necessary.
Link to the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/49x (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)