On Wednesday 9 October, the Member States will be asked to approve without debate the agreement reached with the European Parliament in February on the directive on platform workers, which was also the subject of a political agreement at EU ministerial level on 11 March (see EUROPE 13368/1).
However, a certain feverishness is said to have prevailed among those involved in the dossier recently, particularly in the European Parliament.
According to certain sources, in recent days the European Commission has attempted to draft a new ‘interpretative’ declaration on the concept of the legal presumption of salaried status, enabling France, among others, to join the agreement after abstaining last March.
The concern related in particular to language that could be perceived as potentially weakening the directive and this presumption.
Last March, only Germany, due to the lack of a coalition agreement, and France, long opposed to the direction taken by the directive presented at the end of 2021, were unable to follow their colleagues after Estonia and Greece made a surprise change of position in favour of the instrument.
France had requested a new explanatory statement to enable it to support the text of the directive during the formal vote in the EU Council. This formal vote is now scheduled for 14 October, at the ‘Environment’ Council.
These new attempts to draft an interpretative declaration were in any case attributed at the end of last week directly to the cabinet of the President of the Commission.
The purpose of these textual changes would be to introduce more accommodating language, for example, by placing a little more emphasis on the room for manoeuvre left to the national authorities in assessing situations where there is a presumption of salaried status, or by pointing out that the presumption mechanism does not apply to all platform work situations.
In the European Parliament, where these ‘rumours’ caused some concern at the end of last week, a new interpretation of the agreement would in any case be seen as an affront, given that the initial directive has already been considerably weakened and that the agreement reached in February was reached on a very fragile basis.
When contacted, France’s Permanent Representation to the EU made no comment and gave no indication of its vote.
Other sources interviewed on Monday 7 October said that they did not expect any new developments on this issue, nor were they aware of any new attempts attributed to Ms von der Leyen’s office. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)