During COREPER I of the 11th of March, representatives of the EU Member States approved the provisional agreement made with the European Parliament on the 8th of February concerning the Platform Work Directive. The qualified majority needed for the agreement to be voted was reach thanks to the support of all EU Member States except Germany, who abstained, and France who opposed the text.
This version of the Platform Work Directive, now approved in the interinstitutional negotiations, is less ambitious as the one originally proposed by the European Commission. This is mainly due to the amendments made to the determination of the employment status for persons performing platform work. The initial proposal of the European Commission sets 5 criteria that, if met, would trigger the presumption of employment status for platform workers. The newly voted agreement lets the definition of these criteria to national law, collective agreements and practices. This will undoubtedly weaken the effect of the Directive, allowing for discrepancies between the status of platform workers depending on the EU Member State. However, the agreement reverses the burden of proof of the employment status back to the platforms and provides better guidelines to ensure the protection of workers data.
However, overall the agreement is a positive outcome for cooperatives engaged in platform work since it will remove some ambiguity and legal uncertainty and thus contribute to a more level playing field among platforms, especially for those providing higher social standards for workers, such as cooperatives.
The Platform Work Directive is now in its final stages with the formal approval of the text being expected to be scheduled soon.