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Eurofound organised a #EurofoundLIVE webinar debate on the need to regulate platform work. The event took place on 28 September. The video is available.
Eurofound organised a #EurofoundLIVE webinar debate on the need to regulate platform work. EU social partners Ignacio Doreste, Senior Advisor, ETUC, and Isaline Ossieur, Junior Adviser, BusinessEurope, along with expert academic Professor Vili Lehdonvirta, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and researcher Dragoș Adăscăliței from Eurofound took part in a debate to get to the core of the issues around the regulation of platform work. Mary McCaughey, Head of Information and Communication at Eurofound moderated the webinar.
As digital labour platforms transform European labour markets, effective policy responses and common rules are increasingly pressing if the EU is to achieve a more social, fair and digital economy.
The panel addressed key questions such as: How to protect platform workers while preserving the opportunities and benefits that are generated by the platform economy? How to provide platform workers with legal certainty? Do platforms simply need to find a more sustainable model within the existing rules and regulations? And, in a new era of uncertainty, will it be possible to maintain high-quality jobs for platform workers?
Set against the background of the Commission’s proposal to improve the working conditions in platform work and to support the sustainable growth of digital labour platforms, the one-hour webinar was an opportunity to engage, via LIVE chat, with those closest to the challenges of platform work.
 | Moderator: Mary McCaughey Mary is Head of Information and Communication in Eurofound. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and the College of Europe, Bruges, she started work in Brussels with Europolitics and the Wall Street Journal Europe. She worked with the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA) in South Africa during the country’s transition to democracy, and in 1998 she took up the post of spokesperson with the Delegation of the European Union in Pretoria, heading up its press and information department during the negotiation of the EU–South Africa free trade agreement. Following the end of the Kosovo War, she worked as a communications consultant for the European Agency for Reconstruction in Serbia. She took up the post of Editor-in-Chief in Eurofound in 2003. |
 | Speaker: Ignacio Doreste, ETUC Ignacio Doreste is a Senior Adviser at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). He began his professional career in 2005 as a psychologist and later as an intercultural educator and mediator. In 2008, he joined the Spanish Family Planning Federation as policy officer. From 2009 to 2013, he served in the youth department of the Spanish Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions. Since 2013, he has been working as a youth officer and project manager for the ETUC, where he has provided political and technical assistance to the migration and inclusion working group. Ignacio holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a Master’s in Internal Development and a Master’s in Human Resources Management. |
 | Speaker: Isaline Ossieur, BusinessEurope Isaline Ossieur is a Junior Adviser in the Social Affairs department of BusinessEurope, responsible for the following policy areas: health and safety, industrial relations, and equal opportunities. Prior to joining BusinessEurope, Isaline worked as a policy officer at the European Federation of Education Employers and as a project officer for the European NGO sector in Brussels. She started her professional career as an economic and political trainee at the Embassy of Belgium to Canada in Ottawa. Isaline holds a double Master’s degree in Law and General Economics and studied at the University of Ghent in Belgium and the University of Bergen in Norway. |
 | Speaker: Vili Lehdonvirta, University of Oxford Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. His research examines how digital technologies are used to reshape the organisation of economic activities in society, from gig platforms to online marketplaces and virtual currencies to crowdfunding. He will publish a book entitled Cloud Empires: How digital platforms are overtaking the state and how we can regain control in September 2022. Previously, he worked at the London School of Economics, the University of Tokyo and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. He is a former member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Online Platform Economy and the High-Level Expert Group on Digital Transformation and EU Labour Markets. Vili holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Turku and an MSc from the Helsinki University of Technology. |
 | Speaker: Dragoș Adăscăliței, Eurofound Dragoș Adăscăliței is a research officer in the Employment unit at Eurofound. His current research focuses on topics related to the future of work, including the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs, the consequences of automation for employment and regulatory issues surrounding the platform economy. He is also a regular contributor to comparative projects monitoring structural changes in European labour markets. Prior to joining Eurofound, he was a lecturer in Employment Relations at the University of Sheffield, Management School. He holds an MA in Political Science from Central European University and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Mannheim. |
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