The emergence of “new self-employment” presents a challenge to political actors both in the individual European countries and at the EU level. The new self-employed are exposed to the same social risks as dependent employees, but they generally enjoy fewer social and labour rights. How are social policy-makers reacting to this situation?
Our response to the question is structured as follows: First, comparing the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, we briefly describe the structure of new self-employment. Second, we outline the initiatives carried out at EU level to adjust legislation in an endeavour to accommodate new self-employment and those types of work that are found at the boundary between dependent employment and self-employment. Third, we delineate the ways in which these types of work are considered under national labour legislation and the extent to which they are taken into account by statutory social security systems.
The main finding that emerges is that because of path dependency, national legislators use very different strategies to adjust social security regulations. Moreover, there is no evidence of a common, EU-wide approach to labour law, despite the EU proposal to follow a “targeted approach” as “best practice”.