On Wednesday 7 June, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU will once again try to get the Member States to approve the draft directive on digital platform workers, with a final text slightly amended compared to the compromise of 27 May (see EUROPE 13191/10).
It is convinced that an agreement is within reach. On 31 May, the Member States had still not been able to reach agreement, but this time several delegations were able to partially support the text, on condition, some of them said, that it was no longer weakened with regard to the criteria for triggering the legal presumption of salaried status.
According to several sources, the outcome of the case is now in the hands of Paris, which has been unable to support the text up to now and is still asking for greater certainty with regard to compliance with collective agreements reached at national level, and which has also been concerned, until now, about compliance with the status of the genuinely self-employed.
According to one source, a potential French green light could lead other delegations to an agreement. “But France must no longer seek to weaken the presumption”, says one source, whose country was able to support the latest compromise and had not yet given its opinion on the final adjustments on Monday 5 June.
The Presidency’s objective is to obtain a green light from the Ministers for Employment and Social Affairs on 12 June in Luxembourg.
The latest compromise, dated 2 June, makes two very limited changes to the recitals, which address specific concerns relating to the use of collective agreements to improve the employment situation of people doing platform work, it explains in the document.
The amendments concern the deletion of Recital 24aa, which was “considered as being unclear” (it provided additional guidance on the cases in which the general terms and conditions of platforms are to be considered as unilaterally determined), as well as the deletion to Recital 24a, where an insertion relating to health and safety has been deleted, mainly due to a syntax problem or the lack of concrete illustration.
Link to the latest document: https://aeur.eu/f/784 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)