The second political negotiation meeting between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, convened on Monday 18 September to discuss the directive on digital platform workers, left its participants with mixed impressions.
The meeting focused on the human supervision of automated decisions and transparency in the processing of personal data.
According to the Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, Dragoș Pîslaru (Renew Europe, Romanian), speaking on 19 September on behalf of rapporteur Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D, Italian), the latter insisted on the need for monitoring and inspections to verify correct employment classifications, but no agreement was reached here.
The question of human supervision of decisions also remained unresolved. In fact, no chapter could be closed on Monday despite a longer-than-expected meeting and some progress, according to one source. However, others believe the Council of the EU has taken a step backwards on a number of points, such as the definition of automated systems.
The next meeting will take place on 3 October.
Letter from the European trade unions
For their part, the European Trade Union Confederation and its federations called on political decision-makers, in a joint letter on 18 September, “to adopt a strong directive on platform work that would end the exploitation of vulnerable workers and reestablish fair competition in a quickly developing platform economy”.
Link to the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/8nk (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)