Platform economy

Related to the collaborative, sharing or gig economy, this is a business model where activities are facilitated by creating an open and online platform for the provision of services often provided either digitally or on-the-ground by private individuals. Emerging as a new form of organizing work and employment opportunities via platforms, it involves three categories of actors: (i) the platform (often large corporations); (ii) the service provider and (iii) the user/client. The relation between the platform and service provider is often unclear in terms of their employment status. Service providers are often regarded as self-employed as a result of standard contractual arrangements established by the platform, or their employment status is unclear, affecting working conditions, and/or the services provided involve labour law violations, tax and social security evasion, and potentially therefore involves undeclared work and/or bogus self-employment. 

[Excerpt from European Commission (2016), A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy. COM (2016) 256. Final. Brussels: European Commission, p.6. See also http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=IPOL_STU(2017)614184 ]