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Uber Technologies Inc. today called on European Union officials to implement new rules to regulate “gig economy” platforms such as its ride-hailing and food delivery apps.

The company also published a lengthy paper outlining its positions on the matter.

The move comes as the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, prepares to weigh whether regulatory reforms should be implemented to enhance the working conditions provided by Uber and other gig economy apps. A draft version of the new rules could be ready before year’s end, Reuters reported today.

One of the central topics in the discussion around the gig economy has been how to classify gig economy workers. Uber and tech companies with similar business models, such as Lyft Inc., classify their drivers as independent contractors. There have been legislative efforts aimed at requiring the firms to reclassify their drivers as full-time employees and provide them employment benefits such as overtime pay, paid sick leave and family leave.

“We believe a new approach is possible — one where having access to protections and benefits doesn’t come at the cost of flexibility and of job creation,” Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in a blog post today.

In California, voters last year approved a ballot measure called Proposition 22 that allows companies such as Uber to continue classifying drivers as independent contractors but requires them to provide expanded benefits. 

In the EU, new rules are needed to “standardise and improve access to protections and benefits for independent workers,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “This could include helping platform workers pay into existing public social protection schemes. Or it could mean an industry-funded portable benefits fund, allowing platform workers to accrue funds to access the protections and benefits they want.”

The new rules should be implemented in the form of “industry-wide standards that all platform companies must provide for independent workers,” the CEO elaborated. “Critically, whatever the model, there must be an industry level playing field to ensure all independent workers have consistent earnings whichever app they choose to work on.”

The European Commission will reportedly hold a consultation on Feb. 24 to seek feedback from workers and employers’ representatives on gig economy working conditions. The commission will first seek input on whether new rules are needed and then decide the content of the legislation. 

Photo: Unsplash

France is reportedly pushing to expand regulations that would give European Union member states more power to punish large tech companies’ bad behavior.

The changes France wants to see concern the Digital Services Act, proposed legislation that was designed to reduce anticompetitive behavior by tech companies and provide more online protections for consumers. If companies are found to have transgressed, the fines would be heavy.

France would also like to see countries have the power to force companies to remove content from their platforms that’s deemed problematic. Effectively, France is calling for individual states rather than the EU to be responsible for weeding out “illegal content.”

As it stands, EU member countries don’t have this ability unless the said tech companies have servers located in their country. Apple Inc., Google LLC, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. currently have servers in Ireland and Luxembourg.

According to the Financial Times, Cedric O, France’s minister for the digital economy, has been meeting over the last few weeks with various members of the European parliament to discuss the matter. “Getting these laws passed is a major objective of ours for when France next holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council next year,” he told the Times. “They touch on vitally important subjects both for our economies and democracies.”

The proposition makes some EU officials worried. They told the Times that such a move would “fragment” the single market, saying that if 27 countries are each allowed to make such decisions, the outcome would turn “the single market into a nightmare.”

O also wants member countries to be able to police what it called “harmful content and disinformation,” not just illegal content. “We think the text needs to be broadened to include other types of problematic content,” he said. “If there is no legal framework, there is nothing to stop Twitter or Facebook from censoring speech they do not like.”

Photo: Christiaan Colen/Flickr

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

  <h3>15 February 2021</h3>

The European Union has released its Winter 2021 Economic Forecast, which says that Brexit will dent UK economic growth considerably, and more than for the European Union, despite the new free trade deal between the two parties. 

The free trade deal between the UK and the EU provides for zero tariffs and zero quotas on all goods trade that complies with the appropriate rules of origin. However, the report highlights that non-tariff barriers have increased substantially for both imports and exports from and to the UK.

“In sum, while the FTA improves the situation as
compared to an outcome with no trade agreement
between the EU and the UK, it cannot come close
to matching the benefits of the trading relations
provided by EU membership,” the report says.

The report estimates that, for the EU, on average, the exit of the UK from the European Union under the FTA will generate a loss of GDP of 0.5 percent by 2022. The UK, meanwhile, will see a 2.25 percent drop in GDP over the same period.

Compared to a scenario where the EU and the UK failed to agree an FTA, the FTA has cut the negative economic impact on the EU by about a third and for the UK by about a quarter. The report says those member states with a larger share of goods trade with the UK benefit
relatively more from the FTA than those
with a higher share of trade in services.

While the UK and the EU have agreed to impose no tariffs on goods trade, new non-tariff barriers are considerable, equal to a tax of 10.9 percent for EU imports and 8.5 percent for UK imports, the report says.