Abstract

Technological and social development is desirable and even indispensable, which necessarily involves the restriction of new life situations within legal frameworks. European legislation has been visibly struggling with this problem in recent years, but the established/ongoing regulation may be an obstacle to development. Among other things, this includes the issue of regulating platform work. The emergence and spread of platform work has numerous advantages from an economic point of view, but from a legal point of view, the cautious regulation of this relatively new employment construction is not acceptable to the majority dealing with labour law. In our opinion, the relevant EU legislation is fundamentally flawed, as it basically seeks to answer the question of whether a given legal relationship is an employment relationship or not. The current binary classification might not be sufficient. Thus, the present study examines why platform work can be considered special and what are the labour law guarantees that are justified to be extended—at least as a rule—in this regard. To further investigate the practical risks of the current rules, a recent and relevant judgement of the Hungarian Supreme Court is also analysed in order to illustrate the uncertainties in litigation. The ruling demonstrates that traditional employment tests fail to recognise algorithmic control—including GPS surveillance, scheduling penalties, and unilateral remuneration determination—as indicators of subordination, while placing an insurmountable burden of proof on workers. This case empirically confirms the practical difficulties of the current binary classification. Our aim is to examine whether it is necessary to develop a minimum guarantee system that allows for easier transparency, greater legal certainty and a more uniform application of the law, unlike the current regulation.

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