Platform economy database
Database of initiatives and court cases in the EU
Eurofound’s platform economy database provides information on 396 initiatives and court cases that exist or have been implemented in relation to activities in the platform economy. The database was last updated in November 2024 and provides metadata for each entry, such as geographical scope, year, type of initiative, actors involved, sector and companies concerned. Initiatives include legal instruments such as legislative changes or court decisions, as well as voluntary interventions undertaken by different stakeholders to address issues around platform work.
Search
The database currently contains 396 entries and was last updated in November 2024.
Tag
Active
Denmark
Voocali is a platform that provides translation services in Denmark. In 2018, it signed two agreements with the trade union HK Privat, which represents clerical workers and workers in retail and related industries. One of the agreements concerns the company’s employees (the salaried employees' collective agreement concerning trade, knowledge and service) and the other one is a special agreement concerning freelance workers operating via the platform.
With the freelance agreement, the parties concerned aim to secure fair working conditions and good wages for the workers. The platform itself was started as an attempt to improve the market access of interpreters that had been dependent on the oftentimes poor services of interpretation agencies. Through the platform, the interpreters obtain the possibility to profile themselves and benefit from partly automatised administrative work processes instead of being dependent on an agency.
Among others, the freelance agreement includes the following aspects:
Additionally, it contains a range of declarations of intent regarding the establishment of a pension scheme (in the sense that freelancers can opt for a pension scheme via Voocali), further education contributions and enhanced tax reporting (find the original agreement in Danish here).
The platform economy is one of those moving targets, which, despite receiving increasing media and policy attention, has proven difficult to regulate. Given the heterogeneity of employment relationships, business models, types of platform work and cross-border issues, this is not surprising.
Technological change is accelerating as the capacity of electronic devices to digitally store, process and communicate information expands. Digitalisation is transforming the EU economy and labour markets: nearly one-third of EU workplaces are categorised as highly digitalised. What are the implications of the digital revolution for employment and work?
The rapid rise of the platform economy has led to a marked transformation of European labour markets, and existing regulatory frameworks and voluntary initiatives have yet to catch up. While platform work offers opportunities for workers and employers and potentially contributes to innovation, economic growth and competitiveness in the EU, it has been criticised from the beginning because of the poor employment and working conditions often experienced by workers.
While 2020 may come to be seen as the year platform work gathered pace and started to go mainstream – thanks in large part to COVID-19 containment measures sparking an increase in food and grocery delivery – 2021 could be the year that regulation of platform work is set in motion.
