Proposals on self-employed rights


The European Commission is set to publish new proposals on self-employed workers later this month. 


The measures, to be announced on 7 March, form what the Commission calls a “social fairness package”, and will cover self-employed workers’ access to social benefits (such as unemployment benefit, sick pay and maternity benefit). 


Excluding employers, there are 22 million self-employed workers in the EU — 10% of all workers — and unions are calling for them to have the same access but pay the same contributions for social benefits as employees.