Platform workers across the EU are set to receive improved rights after ministers reached an agreement on the adoption of the Platform Workers Directive following the backing of two more members states.

Last month, the revised EU proposed directive was blocked by a group of member states, casting uncertainty over the legislation with Greece and Estonia among those choosing to abstain from voting. However, in a turnaround, both member states voted in favour of the directive. According to The Guardian, compromise text pushed by Belgium got the law over the line, giving it one final chance of being passed before legislative procedures are timed out due to the forthcoming EU parliamentary elections.

The Platform Workers Directive (PWD), first proposed in 2021, aims to improve working conditions for platform workers. The draft law had been revised in February, with critics describing it as ‘watered-down’.

According to the Council of the European Union, the agreed text “strikes a balance between respecting national labour systems and ensuring minimum standards of protection for the more than 28 million persons working in digital labour platforms across the EU.”

The main compromise elements revolve around a legal presumption which will help determine the correct employment status of persons working in digital platforms:

• member states will establish a legal presumption of employment in their legal systems, to be triggered when facts indicating control and direction are found
• those facts will be determined according to national law and collective agreements, while taking into account EU case-law
• persons working in digital platforms, their representatives or national authorities may invoke this legal presumption and claim they are misclassified
• it is up to the digital platform to prove that there is no employment relationship

Furthermore, member states will provide guidance to digital platforms and national authorities when the new measures are being put in place.

The directive is also aimed at regulating algorithmic management.

The Council said the agreement reached with the Parliament “ensures that workers are duly informed about the use of automated monitoring and decision-making systems regarding their recruitment, their working conditions and their earnings, among other things.”

It also bans the use of automated monitoring or decision-making systems for the processing of certain types of personal data of persons performing platform work, such as biometric data or their emotional or psychological state. Furthermore, it guarantees human oversight and evaluation regarding automated decisions, including the right to have those decisions explained and reviewed.

Fiona Coombe, Director of Legal and Regulatory Research, SIA “Even though there will no longer be an EU-wide definition of “control” for determining employment status, the directive will define a platform worker and will impose duties on platform operators about the use of automated monitoring and decision-making systems regarding their employment. So the directive is still significant and may well provide a benchmark for other jurisdictions looking to protect platform workers.”

Despite having reached an agreement, other member states had continued to abstain from voting. According to Euractiv, Germany abstained due to domestic coalition infighting. France, meanwhile, said it would withhold its vote until further legal clarifications were provided by the European Commission, but other sceptical countries did not follow suit, leaving the EU’s two largest countries isolated.

Last week, France reportedly circulated a set of changes it wanted to make to the text, ultimately creating a significant carve-out to the application of the directive’s key new mechanism, the legal presumption of employment.

This initially looked to harmonise the reclassification processes through which self-employed platform workers could become full-time employees, with all accompanying rights, if a subordinate relationship with the platform was established. However, under the revision, criteria to be used to indicate subordination were deleted from the text, and member states were only obliged to create a presumption of employment in their national systems so that its implementation would make it easier for workers to be considered for reclassification than the status quo.

Pierre-Yves Dermagne, the Belgian deputy prime minister and minister for the economy and employment, said, “We have taken this historic step, so the message is workers are being heard.” He added that the law, “was one of the Belgian presidency’s top priorities” and would improve the working conditions of the 28 million people employed as gig workers in the EU by allowing the “reclassification of those bogus self employed persons”.

EU jobs commissioner, Nicolas Schmit, said, “One member state surprised us by joining the qualified majority at the last moment – of course that was great news.”

Ludovic Voet, Confederal Secretary of the ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation), said on Monday, “Solutions are finally being brought forward to fix the scandal of bogus self-employment. Today’s decision means that millions of people working through digital platforms will no longer be cheated out of the minimum wages, sick pay, holiday pay and social security.”

Voet continued, “Member states have persevered and have seen through the platform corporations’ smokescreen. Today they have sided with workers. We salute the Spanish and Belgian Presidencies of the Council for their determination to see this legislation through. Now is the time for national governments to prepare for rapid implementation.”

Meanwhile, UK law firm Osborne Clarke stated that the measures are not as far-reaching as once expected, but it “may become easier for a wide range of gig workers and independent contractors to claim employment rights against platforms and other intermediaries”.

The law firm added that the impact of the directive “will be felt well-beyond the classic world of taxi and delivery apps: the definition of platform worker appears broad enough to capture many types of worker whose work is assigned to them or performance assessed using any material element of automated decision-making. Most staffing companies use, or are heading towards using, automation in that way.”

On the potential impact to UK legislation, Osborne Clarke said it may form part of the shadow deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner's, drive against "bogus" self-employment contracts and "exploitative" zero hours arrangements in the first 100 days of a new Labour government (if the Labour Party were to win the election).

Meanwhile, work services platform Uber also commented on the agreement on Monday, “EU Countries have voted to maintain the status quo today, with platform worker status continuing to be decided country-to-country and court-to-court. Uber now calls on EU countries to introduce national laws that give platform workers the protections they deserve while maintaining the independence they prefer.”

The European Parliament will now vote on the agreement next month before it can become law and it will need to be ratified by the Council as well. Countries will then have two years to integrate the piece of legislation into their own national systems. The Council added that the text of the agreement will now be finalised in all the official languages and formally adopted by both institutions.