Skip to main content
image_topic_undeclared_work.png

Undeclared work

Beyond national variations, at European level undeclared work involves ‘any paid activities that are lawful as regards their nature but not declared to public authorities’. Common types include work carried out in a formal undertaking, which is partially or fully undeclared, and undeclared ‘own account’ or self-employed work.

Topic

Recent updates

adhoc_card_cover.jpg

The debate about the posting of workers in the EU, its economic and social consequences, and ways to manage it is hampered by the fact that reliable, comparable data on...

20 Januar 2020
Publication
Customised report

Policy pointers

  • Favouring a holistic approach to tackling undeclared work: It is important to use several measures and policies covering both prevention and deterrence to help avoid the development of and introduce sanctioning of existing undeclared work situations. All stakeholders should cooperate with a view to devising the best ad hoc response in the context.  
  • Fostering compliance with regulation: Advice could be developed to support companies on their path to compliance, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Expertise and adequate resources in the bodies tasked with monitoring compliance needs to be ensured. 
  • Developing workers’ information and voice: Raising awareness of rights, providing workers with practical, easy-to-understand information and encouraging them to negotiate for their rights are important. This would mean supporting employee representation at all levels, helping to denounce fraudulent situations. 
  • Monitoring business models as part of the employment equation: Certain business models, like the platform industry or work on demand, need to be monitored given their potential impact on employment relationships and work organisation. 
  • Ensuring flexibility and protection in parallel: Regulation is needed to balance protection of workers with a company’s need for flexibility. This is an important step to ensure stability and better knowledge of and respect for the rules. 
  • Addressing the consequences of precarious work: It will be necessary to raise awareness of the impacts of precarious employment on workers and on business models. The assumption of precarious employment is that it involves relationships that do not deliver for workers what a ‘good job’ should: skills recognition and improvement, resources (especially financial) with a view to making ends meet and developing employability. 

Eurofound research

Eurofound has carried out various research activities over the years on undeclared work, as well as on closely related topics such as fraudulent work, posting of workers and other new forms of employment. 

Measures tackling undeclared work

Eurofound research in 2013 looked at policy approaches and measures that have been implemented to tackle undeclared work in 27 EU Member States and Norway since the beginning of the recession in 2008. The analysis provided examples of potentially good practice policy measures that Member States might wish to further consider. 

Fraudulent contracting of work

Taking a broader view on circumventing labour, social and tax regulations, the research path followed since 2016 has highlighted the importance of fraudulent contracting of work. In general, research has focused on pushing the boundaries of misused employment relationships beyond undeclared activities. In-depth analysis of several types of employment relationships, such as fixed-term contracts, posting of workers and self-employment, and in different sectors, such as road haulage, construction and industrial cleaning, has put the spotlight on the connections between undeclared work and fraud.

Posted workers

Research on the situation of posted workers across the EU emphasises the importance of identifying this cross-country phenomenon, specifying obligations and rights applicable in these situations and recalling the criteria to distinguish between genuine and bogus posting. It also underlines the consequences of the misuse of posting for workers, businesses and governments. Assessing and monitoring the posting of workers present challenges like those of undeclared work situations. Indeed, labour inspectorates face similar difficulty in identifying the circumvention of regulations, increased by cross-border characteristics.

New forms of employment

Recent trends in the labour market, including the increasing flexibility of employment relationships and technological development, have led to a rise in new forms of employment, such as casual work or platform work. Eurofound research highlights the challenges these forms of contracting work bring to labour law, labour rights, social protection and benefits, and tax regulations. Some of these new forms have been developed to help formalise undeclared work practices. However, the links between new forms of contracting work and undeclared work are not straightforward and have to be closely monitored. 

Key outputs

adhoc_card_cover.jpg

The debate about the posting of workers in the EU, its economic and social consequences, and ways to manage it is hampered by the fact that reliable, comparable data on...

20 Januar 2020
Publication
Customised report
eurofound-placeholder

Across Europe, new forms of employment are emerging that are different from traditional standard or non-standard employment in a number of ways. Some transform the relationship between employer and employee...

12 Marec 2015
Publication
Research report

EU context

Undeclared work remains a widespread phenomenon around the world. Workers, employers and governments across the EU all experience the negative effects of undeclared work on labour rights, health and safety, social security and taxation. However, assessing the scale of the phenomenon is inherently challenging. European Commission 2019 data estimate undeclared work at about 11.1% of total labour input in the EU private sector and 14.8% of gross value added.

Over the years, national authorities have adopted different policy approaches. Deterrence-based measures aim to improve detection tactics or increase penalties, while compliance-based approaches aim to prevent people from taking up undeclared work, to legitimise previously undeclared work, or to change attitudes.

The EU institutions have put in place a range of initiatives to help reduce the incidence of undeclared work. The creation of the European Platform tackling undeclared work in May 2016 is among the EU-level initiatives to support these efforts. The Platform brings together relevant authorities and actors involved in fighting undeclared work, to tackle this issue more effectively and efficiently, while fully respecting national competences and procedures. Since 26 May 2021, the Platform is a permanent working group of the European Labour Authority (ELA). 

The Platform promotes cooperation between the Commission, social partners and national authorities in preventing and deterring undeclared work, particularly in sectors where it is common: agriculture, aviation, tourism, construction, security services, cleaning, provision of childcare, commerce, road transport and hotels, restaurants and catering. This means all stakeholders working together to exchange information, especially in cross-border situations. Eurofound acts as an observer contributing to the Platform’s discussions and the ELA’s work.

 

Eurofound’s work on undeclared work links in with the Commission’s 2019–2024 priority on a stronger Europe in the world. 

 

Publications results (10)

V tem glavnem poročilu so povzeti ključni izsledki raziskave Eurofounda o delovnih razmerah, ki je potekala v programskem obdobju 2017–2020. Opisan je napredek pri izboljšanju delovnih razmer po letu 2000, proučeno pa je bilo tudi, ali so imeli vsi delavci enake koristi od pozitivnih sprememb

26 February 2021

The debate about the posting of workers in the EU, its economic and social consequences, and ways to manage it is hampered by the fact that reliable, comparable data on the phenomenon are lacking. Accurate statistics on the number of posted workers, their characteristics and working conditions are s

20 January 2020

Casual work, both intermittent and on-call, contributes to labour market flexibility and is therefore increasingly used across Europe. In some countries, practices go beyond the use of casual employment contracts to include other types of contracts and forms of self-employment.

20 December 2019

This report examines the issues in relation to ‘work on demand’, a topic that has received considerable attention in the media recently, mainly due to its links with the platform economy. Work on demand is often presented as a ‘win–win situation’: workers get to tailor their work according to their

14 December 2018

The fraudulent contracting of work is an important issue in many European countries today. EU and national policymakers have turned their attention to violations of the basic protection provided by employment law and collective bargaining that are linked to the fraudulent use of certain employment

21 November 2016

Across Europe, new forms of employment are emerging that are different from traditional standard or non-standard employment in a number of ways. Some transform the relationship between employer and employee, some change work organisation and work patterns, and some do both. This report identifies

12 March 2015

Since the publication of previous reports on how undeclared work is being tackled in the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU27) and Norway (Eurofound, 2008, 2009), the ongoing recession took hold. The aim of this report is to provide an updated overview of the policy approaches and measures

09 June 2013

The aim of this report is to provide a systematic overview of the extent and nature of undeclared work, and how it is being tackled, in Croatia and four EU candidate countries: Iceland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Turkey. The objectives are to analyse the magnitude and

09 June 2013

This overview report and the accompanying knowledge bank represent an important first step in producing a comprehensive learning hub, where social partners can pool and share knowledge on how to tackle undeclared work, review evaluations of policy initiatives and explore their feasibility and

30 June 2009

This overview report provides a typology of the potential approaches to and measures for tackling undeclared work. Such a resource could be used to provide a baseline against which the current approaches and measures used in the current 27 Member States of the European Union (EU27) can be assessed

11 March 2008
Publication
Research report
Blogs results (2)
image_blog_udw_11052020.png

A debate has started in Italy about the support that the state should provide to undeclared workers operating in the informal economy during the COVID-19 crisis. Nunzia Catalfo, Italy’s Minister of Labour in April stated that ‘undeclared work should not exist’ but went on to acknowledge ‘it is a

11 Maj 2020
image_blog_joint_cross_border_inspections_17072019.png

The European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work last year documented the case of a Dutch temporary work agency that hired workers of various nationalities to work for a construction company in Belgium. The wages were suspiciously low, and the Belgian Labour Inspectorate believed that EU law

17 Julij 2019

Disclaimer

When freely submitting your request, you are consenting Eurofound in handling your personal data to reply to you. Your request will be handled in accordance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data. More information, please read the Data Protection Notice.

To verify you're human, please enter the result of this calculation: 20 + 5.