Mr. Nicolas Schmit:

I can agree with the Senator. If I say we are not against the platform, as I said before, because this corresponds to new technological possibilities and to a demand in our society, that should not mean that this economy and these platforms are developing just on an absolutely unacceptable level of protection or wages. I have nothing against the platform and I am even in favour of them developing. However, they can only develop of they respect the fundamental social labour rights in place.

We all see these young guys, as the Senator described, in our cities. They are mainly guys, by the way, there are not so many girls but there are many young guys. They have no minimum wage. They have a very small salary or they do not have a salary because they are considered self-employed. If they have an accident, they have no protection. We want to change that. We have to force the platform to respect that. I have a strong conviction that one cannot allow these kinds of companies – because they are companies, even if they call themselves platforms – to just develop and earn a lot of money by keeping the social standards at the lowest possible level. This is what we are aiming at. We want to change this. We want to state clearly that these young guys, as most are guys, have the right to be protected. They first must be recognised as workers because they are not entrepreneurs. If I were a young person obliged to earn some euro because otherwise I would not have an income, I am not an entrepreneur because I have a bicycle; I am waiting, as the Senator described. What we are doing here is not going against the platform. We are against the working conditions of most of the platforms; perhaps not all of them, but many or most of them. This is what we are doing.

I am convinced that the platform can adapt to that. They absolutely can because some have already. I would not say that working conditions are fantastic but they have respected at least the basic working conditions and salaries and they also consider the people working for them mostly as workers. Some are considered self-employed but then they have to respect them also as self-employed with rights. By the way, we are now introducing the right for self-employed also to negotiate collectively with the platforms, which was up until now more or less impossible. I am sorry that I have perhaps not been well understood, as the Senator read my statement. It is clear that what we want is fair social conditions for platform workers. This means that, for many of them, they have to be recognised as what they are in reality, namely, workers with all the rights in terms of wage and social protection. That is the meaning.