Adapting social security to the needs of platform workers  – comparing the effects of EU initiatives in the Netherlands and Germany

Abstract The growth of digital platform work has intensified debates about employment classification and social protection across Europe. Platform workers are typically classified as self-employed, excluding them from labour protection and social security schemes designed for employees. The EU Platform Work Directive (2024) addresses this through a rebuttable legal presumption of employment status, aiming to facilitate reclassification of platform workers as employees. However, we argue that reclassification alone may prove insufficient for adequate protection. Platform work predominantly functions as secondary employment for multiple jobholders with irregular earnings and fragmented work histories – patterns that challenge social security systems designed around standard, full-time, single-employer relationships. Even if they gain employee status, platform workers often cannot meet qualifying conditions for unemployment insurance, pension accrual and other benefits. Through a comparative institutional analysis of Germany and the Netherlands, we examine how different welfare state configurations mediate both the reclassification process and the relationship between employment status and effective protection access. Germany’s conservative-corporatist model creates sharp distinctions between employee and self-employed protection, while the Netherlands’ hybrid flexicurity approach accommodates non-standard work more flexibly. Our analysis reveals that neither model has resolved these tensions, suggesting EU-level reclassification initiatives require concurrent reforms to national social security architectures to provide meaningful protection for platform workers.