Sara Skyttedal, Miriam Lexmann, Radan Kanev, Gheorghe Falcă, Jessica Polfjärd, Lukas Mandl, Stefan Berger, Tomáš Zdechovský, Romana Tomc, Christian Sagartz, Eugen Tomac, Rosa Estaràs Ferragut are members of the European People’s Party Group in Parliament and are part of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.

The digital platform economy has undoubtedly become an essential part of our lives, shaping everything from employment to transportation and consumption.

But this growing part of our economy also presents its own unique set of challenges — challenges that must be addressed by a clear and balanced legal framework. And as the European Parliament considers a new directive, a large question still looms: should platform workers be considered employees; and do they want to?

The new directive on improving conditions for digital platform workers that is being considered by Parliament currently has two key points. — introducing new rules on algorithmic management, which is both welcome and necessary, and the presumption of employment, which, unfortunately, is misguided in its scope.

Parliament has, of course, addressed this issue of employment before — but in a much more even-handed manner.

Authored by MEP Sylvie Brunet of Renew Europe, and adopted by a majority of 524 MEPs, an own-initiative report from September, focusing on social protections for platform workers, had called for a limited presumption of employment. This meant, the report’s compromise targeted “...

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