[Order of the Court of Justice, 22 April 2020] The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled on a request for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of the “worker” status under EU law for the purpose of the Directive 2003/88/EC concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time. The Court of Justice has stated that an individual qualified as self-employed independent contractor under national law cannot be classified as “worker” under EU law if “that person is afforded discretion: to use subcontractors or substitutes to perform the service which he has undertaken to provide; to accept or not accept the various tasks offered by his putative employer, or unilaterally set the maximum number of those tasks; to provide his services to any third party, including direct competitors of the putative employer, and to fix his own hours of ‘work’ within certain parameters and to tailor his time to suit his personal convenience rather than solely the interests of the putative employer”, unless his independence is fictitious and it is possible to establish the existence of an employment relationship between the individual and the putative employer. The decision of the European Court of Justice has an impact on the qualification of the gig-workers.
