More and more, people want to work where, when, and for whom they want: they ask for a flexible work and digital labour platforms can be the answer to these needs.

Yet, securing both flexibility and security at the same time (flexicurity) represents a big challenge.

The key principles linked to flexicurity are defined as flexible and reliable contractual arrangements, comprehensive lifelong learning strategies, effective active labour market politics and modern social security system.

Denmark has been a pioneer in implementing a system of “flexicurity” in its labour market.

Flexicurity and collective bargaining are key components of its welfare model. The Danish experience shows that the right balance regarding decent work can also be found through social dialogue. Indeed,

one of the first attempts in flexicurity terms at a national level has been the Hilfr agreement, a recent example- of collective bargaining in the platform economy in Denmark. There, as we reported in our previous article, the employees working through the Hilfr cleaning platform had been given the opportunity to decide whether they would like to stay self-employed or switch to the employment with the platform. The collective agreement introduced a new category of workers – the so-called Super Hilfrs – in parallel with the existing freelance workers, so-called Freelance. Super Hilfrs are workers that opt for the status of employee rather than freelancer and will be covered by the company agreement. After working 100 hours, a Freelance Hilfr automatically becomes a Super Hilfr (unless he or she objects to it - or choose to become a Super Hilfr earlier).

The agreement also includes social benefits like pensions, paid holiday entitlements, and sick pay for the Super Hilfrs.

In the last years, the European Commission promoted flexicurity which became a key policy concept. Flexicurity was incorporated into the European Employment Strategy 2007 (and in the Lisbon Agenda): guideline 21 calls for Member States “to promote flexibility combined with employment security” and to implement employment policies aimed at achieving full employment, improving quality and productivity at work, and strengthening social and territorial cohesion. This document proposes a set of policy components, reaffirmed later within the EU-2020 strategy.

There, the Commission has committed to define and implement the second phase of the flexicurity agenda together with European social partners, to identify ways to better manage economic transitions and to fight unemployment and raise activity rates.

At this regard, an interesting observation comes from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), that expressed some recommendations on the need to improve the working conditions of platform workers preserving the proper enforcement of EU competition laws in a fast- changing and highly innovative digital platform economy. In its “comments before the European Commission, Directorate-General for Competition, in the matter of the European Commission’s public consultation on its “Collective bargaining agreement for self- employed—the scope of application of E.U. competition Rules”, it underlines the need to allow the Member States to create a third category (when not already existing) related to economically dependent (vulnerable) full-time platform workers. “This third category status of “flexicurity” would enable platforms to provide more benefits without the risk of having their workers classified as non-contingent workers entitled to full employment rights”.

This has also been confirmed in the European Parliament 2020 study “The platform economy and precarious work”, where the flexicurity model, with universally guaranteed access to some services and social benefits, regardless of employment status, is defined as a possible way to provide better social protection coverage for platform workers.