The EU Platform Work Directive: What’s New, What’s Missing, What’s Next?

Abstract

Policy recommendations

• The adoption of the Platform Work Directive by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) enhances the EU and national labour law systems by introducing a number of concrete advancements. They include a presumption of employment for platform workers, clearer rules on algorithmic management and data rights, stronger collective labour rights, and robust enforcement safeguards. 
• By granting algorithmic management and collective rights to genuinely self-employed platform workers, the Directive significantly expands the personal scope of application of labour rights. This initiative should be seen as one of the first steps towards redesigning the normative paradigms that govern labour law. 
• By establishing a comprehensive framework for algorithmic management and data rights at both the individual and collective levels, the Directive highlights the urgent need for a new EU instrument regulating data-driven technology in the workplace, applicable to workers across all conventional sectors. 
• Given the broad discretion left to national legislators, it is crucial that trade unions, employers and labour advocates take advantage of the Directive’s groundwork to prevent the emergence of fragmented, burdensome and ineffective regimes during (and after) the two-year transposition period, which will start from the moment the Directive is published in the Official Journal of the EU and thus is likely to end in autumn 2026.

Keywords: crowd work, EU policy, digital economy, EU Directive, labour law, workers rights, EU countries