European Union member states agreed, at the last minute, to advance a directive aimed at digital platforms, tackling the prevalence of false self employment in the gig economy. The effort began under Spain’s second deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, but faced pushback from France and Germany. With the Belgian presidency at the helm and only months left in the European Parliament’s current term, members trimmed some details of the rule and moved toward approval.
The new rider law, as supporters call it, targets how platform workers are treated. It covers everyone who delivers, assembles furniture, or cleans homes through an app, among others. Estimates place the impact at around 28 million people across the European Union.
The rule strengthens the right to secure an employment contract for these workers, though the extent varies by country. Implementation will take time, and in Spain the measure will adjust parts of existing law. Here are the core elements of the measure.
1. What the directive covers and what it aims to achieve
The directive states that its objective is to improve working conditions and protect personal data in platform work. This goal frames the opening article commonly referred to as the rider law.
To pursue this objective, the directive creates a presumption of employment for people offering services through digital platforms. In practical terms, platform workers should be considered employees by default. Platforms would be responsible for hiring, paying salaries, funding social security, and ensuring coverage for potential accidents, among other duties.
If a platform argues that a worker fits the independent contractor definition, it must justify this before the national labor authority. And each country will set the concrete rules that define the employment presumption.
A key change from the original Spanish proposal is the shift from a fixed set of five universal characteristics to a system where each state creates or adapts its own criteria to determine whether a platform worker is an employee or not.
2. How a platform is defined under the law
Distinguishing a standard business from a digital platform is central since the rule obliges the latter but not the former. The law identifies three criteria for work performed on a platform. First, work must be delivered remotely through digital means, typically via a mobile device or computer.
Second, the work is on demand. The worker responds to a client request and does not actively seek work or set schedules on their own. Third, the work is compensated and some decision making is automated.
The clearest example is food delivery apps. A customer places an order in the app, the delivery person receives it through the same app, and an automated system assigns the task. They are paid for picking up and delivering the order.
3. Which workers and companies are affected?
Estimates from the European Commission place the number of platform workers at about 28 million. The scene is dominated by food couriers, but the definition also covers workers who connect with clients through apps for home repairs, such as handymen. For instance, TaskRabbit, in which Ikea invested, operates on this model. There are also cleaning apps that connect cleaners with clients for a commission, and even a platform like Cuideo followed this pattern.
The rule is not limited to on site services. Remote platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, or Amazon Mechanical Turk also play a major role, offering tasks that can be completed from home for someone elsewhere in the world. Translations or small tasks used to train artificial intelligence fall into this category. The directive affects these remote platforms as well, though enforcement is more challenging due to their international reach.
Platforms must disclose how many workers participate in delivering their services. For example, Glovo or Uber would need to report to national authorities how many riders they employ and under what conditions, such as average weekly hours, service frequency, and earnings.
4. What is said about algorithms?
The directive calls for transparency in algorithms. Platforms must explain to workers how automated decision making affects their daily tasks, regardless of employment status.
Platforms with 250 or more employees in a country must fund the hiring of an advisor to help staff understand the algorithmic audit and to raise questions or suggest changes as needed.
5. How Spain adapts the law and when it starts
The directive will apply in Spain as an extension of the existing rider law. It adds two main changes. First, the presumption of labor status will extend to all platform workers, whereas today it covers only delivery platforms. Jurisprudence has already shown that apps for cleaners can misclassify workers as independent contractors.
Second, it will expand transparency obligations around algorithms, since the current Spanish framework is relatively broad. For example, the requirement to conduct a biannual audit does not exist in the current framework.
Opinions from the digital platform sector vary. Some argue that the final version leaves room for states to avoid strict enforcement. Others, including professors and experts in digital platforms, contend that the obligation to maintain the employment presumption is explicit and that the vagueness of certain details may actually help workers by allowing countries to tailor labor frameworks to the overall goal.