Introduction A good decade ago, Transnational Company Agreements (TCAs) were a hot topic in Europe. In the broader context of globalisation, they were hailed as an interesting step forward in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), nowadays called Corporate Sustainability. However, since 2016 discussions about TCAs faded and ever since it seems as if…
Formally adopted by the Council of the EU in May 2024, the AI Act[1] aims to enhance the competitiveness of the Single Market, while ensuring the protection of health, safety, and fundamental rights. This comprehensive regulation impacts a wide range of stakeholders including manufacturers, deployers,[2] providers of AI models and systems, who must inventory their…
On 13 December 2023, the Hungarian Supreme Court (Curia) ruled on the classification of platform work relations between a food delivery platform (Platform) and a delivery driver. This is the first platform work ruling in Hungary, and also in the Central and Eastern European region. The Curia stated that the platform worker is self-employed; therefore,…
Background The proposed EU directive on improving working conditions in platform work is the first legislative initiative that attempts to regulate the use of AI, in the form of algorithmic management, in the workplace. This innovative legislative proposal pursues a double goal: first, correcting the employment status of people working in digital labour platforms and…
The increasing and pervasive use of digital technology in the workplace is accompanied by a growing perception that the current regulatory and definitional frameworks used by legal systems to allocate obligations and protections in labour relations are becoming obsolete and inadequate. The rarefaction of labour law notions This inadequacy is evident in the diminishing significance…
The world of work is changing. In this context, the lines that divide self-employed and employed persons are becoming less and less discernible. This phenomenon has led to the numerical increase of dependent self-employed persons who find themselves in a comparable predicament to that of employees, where their weak negotiating position and economic dependency on…
On 9 May 2022, the report on the final outcome of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which contained 49 proposals and 320 targetted measures, also in the area of employment and social policy, was presented to the Presidents of the European Parliament (the Parliament), the Council of the European Union (the Council) and…
A growing body of research is devoted to in-work poverty. This should not come as a surprise. If poverty was long perceived as a problem associated with worklessness, the stubborn reality of high rates of poverty among workers in poor countries and the increasing inequalities in the growth of earnings in richer countries has changed…
Labour shortage Labour markets across Europe have become tight quite quickly after the pandemic with unemployment rates at record-low levels. Eurozone businesses are confronted with unprecedented and widespread shortages of workers. According to the classical economic theory, in tight labour markets, workers gain bargaining power. However, wages have been stagnating for many decades now. Moreover,…
On 14 September 2022, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, delivered the State of the Union speech, where she laid out the main steps to be undertaken by the Commission in the next year. Unsurprisingly, and understandably, the vast majority of the speech was dedicated to the war in Ukraine and…
