The EU social pillar: An answer to the challenge of the social protection of platform workers?

Abstract

With atypical work gaining popularity, platform work seems to combine all the elements which, by deviating significantly from the standard employment relationship, challenge social security systems. After an overview of the features of the standard employment relationship and the different ways in which non-standard forms of work diverge from them, the article focuses on the nature of platform work. It then analyses how platform work is regulated in five European social security systems (i.e. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium), and how this regulation may fare when analysed under the lens of the recent European Commission’s proposal for a Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. The article concludes by highlighting the need for further adaptation of social security systems to the specific features of platform work, and by noting the risks of a regulatory approach towards this new form of work being dominated by the exclusion of low-paid work from the scope of labour-related social insurance schemes.