The place of self-employment in the European context. Evidence from nine country case studies: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Chapter 4 presents an overview of the various regulatory and legal frameworks around self-employed workers, the main institutional arrangements and a state of the art examination of social dialogue in each country case study. Nine European countries are covered (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK), embodying different welfare state regimes and diverse models of labour market and profession regulation. The country studies present the same structure, which includes an analysis of the institutional framework, the public policies supporting self-employment and the emergent and innovative strategies of collective representation. The picture that emerges from the country studies is small reforms at the margin and great fragmentation of the measures implemented, accompanied by institutional experimentalism and some innovative strategies of collective representation, carried out by new actors in the industrial relations arena.