On Monday 27 November, the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council, through its Minister of Labour and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz Pérez, called on the Member States to show flexibility on the directive on digital platform workers and even to modify the mandate that the EU Council adopted on 12 June (see EUROPE 13199/1).
With the Presidency and European Parliament negotiators meeting again on Tuesday 28 November for another trilogue devoted once again in part to the legal presumption of salaried status, the Spanish Minister took advantage of the Employment and Social Affairs Council in Brussels to call on her counterparts to work towards an “agreement with the Parliament” and also “to modify” its position in order to seize the “historic” opportunity to complete this directive. Like the Parliament, the EU Council should “soften its stance”, she told the ministers.
During this short public exchange, the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, also underlined the efforts made by the Parliament to move closer to the EU Council’s position and called on the EU Council to show flexibility too. “We would fail if we did not achieve a solid presumption (of salaried status) in this directive”, he commented, pointing out that “millions of workers” are waiting for solutions.
However, only five Member States took the floor on Monday 27 to respond to the minister’s call: the Netherlands, Malta, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Portugal, which are known to be part of the so-called ‘progressive’ group on this directive, i.e. in favour of the Commission’s original text, which provides greater protection for platform workers.
“We need to do everything we can to ensure that the trilogue comes to a successful conclusion under the Spanish Presidency; we need a directive that really helps platform workers”, commented the Dutch minister, Karien van Gennip.
No other Member State wished to comment. On Friday 24 November, the Member State representatives showed “little flexibility”, according to one source, on the ideas put forward by the Spanish Presidency to bring the European Parliament closer on the concept of legal presumption (see EUROPE 13298/14).
While, according to another source, some openness was shown regarding the automatic reclassification of a worker in the event of non-rebuttal of the legal presumption – which could be accepted by virtue of compliance with national conditions – and on relaxing the burden of proof mechanism, the Member States remained generally unwilling to move on the number of criteria to be met to trigger the procedure and a majority group wanted to maintain the requirement for a link between reclassification criteria and national law provisions.
While some countries wanted to return to the initial position of two out of five criteria, which was put forward in the Commission’s directive, others reiterated their commitment to the Council’s mandate, which provides for three out of seven criteria.
The European Parliament rapporteur, Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D), is due to send a new working paper to the Spanish Presidency, but discussions with the other political groups had not been completed by Monday 27 November and the meeting initially scheduled between the rapporteurs could also potentially be postponed until 28 November. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)