Recalibrating Social Protection: Legal Tools to Address European Gig Workers’ Exclusion from Social Protection

Abstract

Abstract

Introduction: The rise of digital labour platforms has fundamentally disrupted European labour markets, exposing a structural fault line in existing social protection systems. Across the EU, millions of platform workers—classified as self-employed contractors—are systematically excluded from the labour and social protection entitlements attached to dependent employment, including unemployment insurance, sick pay, pension rights, and minimum wage guarantees. This exclusion is maintained primarily through employment status classification mechanisms that do not reflect the economic reality of algorithmically directed, economically dependent work. Aim: This article aims to examine the legal and policy tools available within EU law to address the exclusion of platform workers from social protection, with particular attention to Directive (EU) 2024/2831 on improving working conditions in platform work (the Platform Work Directive). It maps the substantive rights at stake, assesses collective bargaining as an enforcement mechanism, evaluates voluntary and mandatory social protection modalities, and critically analyses the Directives employment presumption and its explicit exclusion of tax, criminal, and social security proceedings from its scope. Materials and Methods: The article adopts a doctrinal and comparative methodology, combining analysis of EU primary and secondary law—including the TFEU, the 2019 Council Recommendation on access to social protection, Regulation (EC) No 883/2004, and the Platform Work Directive—with a critical review of secondary literature produced by leading European scholars in labour law and social security law. The comparative scope is confined to EU Member States, with focused attention on Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway) and Central and Eastern European Member States (Romania, Hungary, Poland), reflecting both the authors research expertise and the contrasting regulatory trajectories of these jurisdictions. Non-EU sources and ILO instruments are drawn upon where they illuminate the analytical framework. Results: The analysis demonstrates that the primary barrier to platform worker social protection is the employment status binary entrenched in national and EU social security law. Collective bargaining has proven effective in Nordic Member States where institutional preconditions are met, but has been severely weakened in CEE jurisdictions through deliberate post-2008 legislative reforms. Neither voluntary nor mandatory social protection modalities, in isolation, have closed the coverage gap. The Platform Work Directives rebuttable employment presumption constitutes a significant step forward, but its exclusion of social security and tax proceedings from its scope—a product of EU competence limits under Article 153 TFEU—represents a structural flaw that Member States should remedy in transposition. An integrated framework combining a strengthened legal presumption, robust social dialogue institutions, and partial decoupling of social protection from rigid employment categories is necessary to ensure genuine and durable protection for platform workers across the EU.