Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), rapporteur, and Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, hold a press conference on the outcome of the negotiations with the Council on new rules for people working through digital labour platforms. This transcription is a result of an authomatic process. Please check against delivery.

digital single market (T)

Strasbourg

press conference

PÎSLARU, Dragoş (Renew, RO)

GUALMINI, Elisabetta (S&D, IT)

Delivery EE2024 (T)

Press conference by Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), rapporteur, and Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair on the outcome of the negotiations with the Council on new rules for people working through digital labour platforms

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș P&Icirc;SLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, Thank you very much and good morning. Indeed, after more than 11 hours of negotiation, we are really proud to announce that we have a provisional agreement with the Council represented by the Spanish presidency on platform work. This is a very crucial and historical moment where we have actually struggled to fight for the rights of workers that are in the field of digital platforms, labour, digital platforms.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, What is really important here is to remember the pandemics. During the pandemics, we were really helped by these people that are more than 5 million people across Europe who have struggled to to help us have a normal life. And right now is just the right moment to look at their situation, to improve their condition, to to be sure that they can enjoy rights and they can enjoy the right protection and we in the European Parliament are really proud to put that into the wider context of social Europe, of the struggle and the strive that we are having to pursue the European pillar of social Rights.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, And this legislator was a very important legislator in terms of advancing that agenda. You all remember the Porto Summit. You all know that we have been achieving amazing feats in terms of advancing legislation on minimum wage, on pay, transparency, many other files, some of them still ongoing, like the European Disability card and the other file that we have been closing yesterday, equality bodies. Just to give you a couple of examples.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, What I wanted to say on behalf of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, that this legislation has been a proof that working together, having strong majorities in the Parliament, we can put forward an agenda that is ambitious and therefore representing citizens and being there for them in times of hardship and crisis.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, What is important is that we are still going to fight these particular legislators to conclude the other important funds that we have and then, of course, leave a legacy through with the Belgian presidency during the process that is going to be quintessential for the future and the way we are going to look to the European pillar of Social Rights.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, I am just going to try to say also that I am very proud of my colleagues in the Employment and Social Affairs Committee and especially of the negotiating team led by Elisabetta Gualmini, and the fact that we relentlessly being there and working for the rights of all people. And then again right now, more than 5 million workers, four platforms are right now being represented.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, And with that, again, congratulations to Elisabetta and the negotiating team and to team Europe as such, because the European Parliament is working together with the Council and the Commission for improving citizens lives. So thank you very much.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, First of all, we are very happy to have this deal. After, I guess, more than 12 hours of trialogue, I think this is really an historic deal. I'm not exaggerating. I really would like to thank all the S&D team, Irina Sanchez, Silvia Righi, our coordinator in the S&D the AMPLO committee Agnes Jongerius, who really supported the the deal and of course the chair Dragos Pîslaru for his support.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, This is an historic deal because, basically, for the first time we build up a framework of social rights for millions of workers in Europe, who are among the most precarious, the most discontinuos, the low paid ones and the ones who sometimes are wrongly classified. So, we build up a mechanism through which, if you are completely dependent from an algorithm, a machine, for the organisation of work, for your breaks, you know, the speed with which you have to deliver things and your vacations. It is really very hard to consider you as self-employed. You are a worker, you are an employee and you deserve to have social rights related to that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, But also we protected the fair competition in the single market, because we want that the multinationals, delivery multinationals, but all the multinationals dealing with digital platform work, can have a common level playing field with the basic rules about transparency, the duty to inform the competent authorities in the different countries about the workers they hire, the duty also to enter into negotiations with social partners about the algorithms. This is a complete novelty in our European legislation.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, So we protect the workers, we protect, you know, good employers. We allow workers to correct bogus self-employment. And overall, we strengthen the European social model. This is the European social model. You know, you stay together with the dynamic of innovations and change. We are not against the changes, innovation, digitalisation in the labour market. But we think that we have to manage these big transitions and transformations in order to protect workers.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, Now we are speaking in general of 28 the millions of workers related to platforms and they are growing and growing every month. So this is the first act that deals with the labour market of the future. One thing I am particularly proud of is the human oversight. So it cannot happen anymore that the you are dismissed by a WhatsApp message. You are fired by an automatic email, even before you are dead on the street as it happens with a rider in Italy. So we do not want the inhuman labour market. Let me just switch to Italian.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, This really is a historic agreement. I doubted that we'd be able to get to such a good compromise, because we now have the possibility to look at what's happening in this labour market and move the burden of proof.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, Ensure that we don't have these people being falsely deemed to be self employed and not leaving it up to those people to prove that they are not self-employed, but rather it being the platform that is responsible for demonstrating that that employee really is self-employed. And so this is a real improvement for the social rights and labour rights of millions of workers.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, This is the kind of step that we've never seen before in Europe, looking at the algorithms, improving transparency. Our text is incredibly ambitious. And I am really incredibly happy that we are now managing to provide protection. Now, of course, we want to have competition and fair competition between multinationals, but we also want to protect workers who in this labour market should have the support that they deserve, should not be abused by these companies, as often was the case in the past.

Q&A, Question regarding on the five different criteria that need to be fulfilled for someone to be classified as being a worker in an employment relationship.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, -

Q&A, Question regarding on two criteria which defines a worker working through digital labour platforms. Second question regarding on the definition of a digital platform.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dragoș PÎSLARU (Renew, RO), EMPL Committee Chair, -

Q&A, Question regarding on differences between Council, Commission and Parliament on the five indicators.

Q&A, Question regarding on the provisional agreement speaks of indicators.

SOUNDBITE (English), Elisabetta GUALMINI (S&D, IT), Rapporteur, - -