Il saggio è destinato agli studi in onore del prof. Alessandro Garilli

The Author analyses EU directives and the to the case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU in order to identify whether there is a European notion of “subordinate” worker and if this can also include those forms of work, typical of the gig-economy, in which there is no real control over the execution phase of the service performed.
The research takes into consideration particularly Directive (EU) 2019/1152 on “transparent and predictable working conditions in the European Union” and the proposal for a directive “on improving working conditions in platform workers” 9.12.2021 COM(2021) 762 final, highlighting how in the first it is very clear how the rules contained therein apply only to people bound by an employment contract as defined by national law, with consideration to the case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU. It is clear that self-employed persons should not fall within the scope of directive 2019/1152, except for the case of bogus self-employment.
The second directive, on the other hand, provides for a complicated and innovative system of legal presumptions, but art. 20(2) states that “as regards persons performing platform work who are not in an employment relationship” national provisions which are more favourable to platform workers, or which have the aims to encourage or permit the application of collective agreements shall be allowed only “insofar as such national rules are compatible with the rules on the functioning of the internal market”. A clear way to say that only if the employee is a subordinate one the directive can be applied to him.
The research aims to understand whether the Italian legislator can unilaterally decide to extend the content of directive no. 1152 also to para- (or quasi-)subordinate workers and people whose performance is organized by another (hetero-organized workers), two categories that in Italian legislation, albeit in an unclear way, are equated in various ways to subordinated workers.