Applying employment rules to work services platforms has become one of Europe’s stickiest issues, Politico reported. Left-leaning politicians want to expand employee rights to independent contractor gig workers while right-leaning politicians warn that they could destroy the flexibility that makes such work attractive. European legislators are going to try another shot at making a deal on Monday.

According to the Politico article, about 28 million people across Europe are doing platform work — delivering meals, offering passengers a ride or performing online tasks.

Last December, the European Commission proposed that, if a platform exerted control over a worker, a gig worker was presumed to be an employee. Two out of five criteria were needed to define a gig worker: control over price, appearance, performance, organization of work and the ability to work for others. Under the draft rules, up to 4.1 million platform workers were expected to be reclassified as employees instead of their current status as independent contractors. Applying relevant labour laws and industry agreements, would let these workers earn on average €121 more every year, the Commission estimates. The rules aimed to protect gig workers from exploitation, most of them being young and less able to negotiate for better conditions.

Since last December, negotiations have been difficult between left and right wing politicians in the European Parliament and Council. There was no deal agreed by the initial target date for a committee vote in October. Nor was there one by a second target date on November 30. The next vote is scheduled for today.

In the absence of agreement before the end of the month, the Council presidency passes to Sweden, the only country to object to EU-wide gig worker rules because it said this should be decided individually by national governments and not by EU law.

Member countries will be given a two-year deadline to enter the law into their rulebooks which, given current momentum would mean the end of 2025, by which time there could be as many as 43 million gig workers in the bloc. Until then, gig workers and those commissioning work across Europe commanded by the same algorithm will be faced with a patchwork of evolving national regulation.