Balancing Competition and Worker Protection: The EU’s Platform Work Package in a Social Market Economy

Abstract

The European Union’s commitment to a social market economy requires balancing competition and social protection. This tension is particularly evident for digital labour platforms, where self-employed workers often find themselves in a precarious position. Lacking traditional labour protections, they also face restrictions under competition law when organising collectively. The EU’s Platform Work Package represents an effort to close this gap. It includes the reclassification of false self-employed workers and the introduction of collective bargaining exemptions for some genuine self-employed individuals. This shift represents a partial departure from the traditional binary distinction between workers and undertakings, acknowledging the evolving nature of work relationships in the platform economy. While these measures attempt to strengthen worker protections, the final form reflects the EU’s structural limitations in harmonising social policy across member states. This article evaluates whether these measures are sufficient in addressing the power imbalance between workers and platforms. It argues that, for the EU to fully realise its commitment to a social market economy, competition law should be utilised more proactively—not just to exempt certain workers from restrictions, but to directly regulate platform dominance and mitigate dependency relationships.