On the evening of 15 December, seven Member States were reported to have expressed concerns about the agreement reached on the night of 12-13 December between the EU Council and the European Parliament on the Directive on workers on digital platforms (see EUROPE 13313/11): France, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Hungary and Estonia.
According to certain sources, France and Lithuania have also cited difficulties with the agreement reached on the legal presumption of salaried status and the threshold of 2 out of 5 criteria to trigger it.
Criticism at this stage would have focused on the methods of the Spanish Presidency, which did not consult the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) beforehand on these new provisions on legal presumption. According to one source, it has thus “crossed the lines of its mandate” to negotiate with the European Parliament.
According to another source, these delegations wanted above all to have access to the final text of the agreement and to examine it in detail before making a decision, in order to ensure that “the Council’s mandate (of 12 June, editor’s note) has been respected”.
In principle, the Member States will be asked to vote on 20 December, but a source has indicated that this timetable could slip to 22 December.
At this stage, these seven countries, if they were to vote against the agreement, could constitute a blocking minority, with the abstention of Germany, which has no position on this issue, favouring the ‘against’ camp.
But other sources expressed a little more optimism, even on the basis of the 15 December exchange and the comments made by these delegations. EUROPE will continue to follow this story.
Link to the text of the provisional agreement: https://aeur.eu/f/a6b (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)