Book Presentation “Social Law 4.0: Update: Innovative Approaches to Ensuring and Financing of Social Protection for Platform Workers in Europe”
Chair(s): Olga Chesalina (Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Germany)
Discussant(s): Olga Chesalina (Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Germany)
Our special session proposal is dedicated to the presentation of the book project “Social Law 4.0: Update: Innovative Approaches to Ensuring and Financing of Social Protection for Platform Workers in Europe” which is expected to be published by Nomos Publishing House (Germany) in the coming months. This book is a continuation of the book project, that was published in 2021 (Becker, Ulrich/Chesalina, Olga (eds.), Social Law 4.0: New Approaches for Ensuring and Financing Social Security in the Digital Age, Nomos: Baden-Baden 2021).
Social law responses to labour market transformation driven by digitalization and the platform economy remain highly relevant. On the one hand, the specific nature of platform work, which can be characterized by its atypical self-employment status (which is often difficult to determine correctly), low pay, marginal engagements and a high proportion of unpaid work, creates barriers to accessing social security systems for them. On the other hand, new forms of self-employment and platform work in particular, pose different challenges for the financing of social security.
In this context, the overall goal of the update book is to provide insights into changes and new developments since autumn 2020 in the light of how access to social protection is actually achieved and how social protection is, or can be, financed. The book provides a legal comparison of innovations, developments and approaches at national and European level. The three-sectioned book includes six “country reports”, covering Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden and France. The other three chapters shed the light on European social law perspective and recent developments addressing the challenges of platform workers, the challenges for coordinating national social security systems in the EU and the challenges of taxing the digital economy in the EU. The final chapter provides a systematic legal comparison of developments concerning access to social protection and the financing of social protection. It analyses, inter alia, the responsibility of private actors for social protection, i.e. undertakings or platform companies. The chapter concludes with some proposals for future regulation and social policy.
In the proposed special session, we would present the main findings of our book project and discuss this very topical issue.
Presentations of the Special Session
Recent EU Developments Addressing Challenges of Platform Workers
Charlotte Bruynseraede, Paul Schoukens
KU Leuven
The presentation analyses EU initiatives and their potential for the improving the social protection of platform workers: 1) the Directive on improving working conditions in platform work, 2) the Directive on adequate minimum wages, and 3) the Guidelines on the application of Union competition law to collective agreements regarding the working conditions of solo self-employed persons. It also reflects on whether the existing instruments are sufficient to address the existing challenges and whether they really have the potential to provide adequate social protection for platform workers or whether (and if so, which) problems remain.
Recent EU Developments of Taxation in the Platform Economy
Katerina Pantazatou
University of Luxembourg
The presentation examines the options for increasing the feasibility of social security systems and what can be learned from the European tax law in this context. The loss of tax revenue due to tax evasion in the platform shadow economy is huge. This is due to a number of factors ranging from deliberate non-declaration, inadvertent misreporting, underreporting or non-reporting due to administrative difficulties, strategic choices or misclassification (confusion as to whether the worker would qualify as a contractor or as an employee). Some of these problems were partly mitigated through the adoption of the so-called DAC7 - Council Directive (EU) 2021/514 of 22 March 2021 amending Directive 2011/16/EU on Administrative Cooperation in the Field of Taxation, OJ L 104, 25.3.2021.
Recent Developments Concerning Access to Social Protection and its Financing in Sweden
Annamaria Westregård
Lund University
This presentation analyses recent legislative developments, case law and collective agreements in Sweden, with a particular focus on umbrella company workers and platform workers. Key reforms include amendments to the Employment Protection Act and the Social Insurance Code, which aim to improve access to sickness and unemployment benefits for non-standard workers. However, challenges remain in accurately calculating entitlements for those with irregular or part-time working hours.
Furthermore, the reform of unemployment insurance in Sweden is presented as an innovative model for financing social protection. From October 2025 benefits will be calculated based on income instead of working hours, which is more beneficial for platform workers with irregular working hours. In 2023, the use of historical income data to calculate sickness benefits was proposed, however this proposal has not yet been adopted.
The implementation of Directive 2024/2831 on improving working conditions in platform work has a direct impact on the labour status and labour rights of platform workers. It may also indirectly affect the social protection of platform workers by facilitating the determination of the status of platform workers through a rebuttable presumption of an employment relationship. The future impact of the Directive on the social protection of platform workers may depend on how this Directive is implemented into national legislation. The paper therefore also addresses Sweden's approach to the future implementation of the EU Directive on Improving Working Conditions in Platform Work in the national legislation.
Determination of the Social Protection Depending on the Employment Status of Platform Workers in the Netherlands
Gijsbert Vonk
University of Groningen
This presentation outlines the judicial and legislative reactions concerning the determination of the social protection for platform workers depending on their employment status in the Netherlands. The reactions come in different ways: firstly, through case law and the interpretation of the existing provisions on the concept of employee and of self-employment, secondly through acts of Parliament and by changing those provisions. Reactions by the legislator, i.e. policy reactions have very different forms: from a reformulation of the legal definition of employed earners to procedural reactions, in particular presumption clauses, to the creation of new legal categories of economic activities, positioned somewhere between employment and self-employment.
Determination of the Social Protection Depending on the Employment Status of Platform Workers in Italy
Edoardo Ales
University of Naples Parthenope
This presentation outlines the judicial and legislative reactions concerning the determination of the social protection for platform workers depending on their employment status in Italy. The reactions come in different ways: firstly, through case law and the interpretation of the existing provisions on the concept of employee and of self-employment, secondly through acts of Parliament and by changing those provisions. Reactions by the legislator, i.e. policy reactions have very different forms: from a reformulation of the legal definition of employed earners to procedural reactions, in particular presumption clauses, to the creation of new legal categories of economic activities, positioned somewhere between employment and self-employment.
