The University of Law

This article examines the complex and innovative personal scope of the EU Platform Work Directive 2024/2831, highlighting its dual framing around the concepts of ‘platform workers’ and the broader category of ‘persons performing platform work’. The authors explore how the Directive partially departs from traditional binary distinctions between employees and self-employed persons by introducing a more nuanced regulatory approach anchored in both labour law and data protection law. The article analyses the scope of key provisions of the Directive, showing how it confers many protections beyond the confines of the employment relationship. It critically evaluates the potential interpretive tensions between Articles 4 and 5 and underscores the Directive's expansive redefinition of platform work. In doing so, the article positions the Directive as a paradigm shift in EU social regulation – one that embraces a universalistic vision of labour rights grounded in the reality of personal work rather than contractual form and employment status. The authors also reflect on the implications for future EU regulation and international standard-setting processes, particularly those led by the ILO.

Given the nature of African governments' use of communication surveillance and the importance of human rights protection in such practices, there is a need for adequate human rights safeguards in communication surveillance. While the use of communication surveillance is not new in African countries, its increased indiscriminate use in the region has raised privacy concerns, including governments' illegitimate surveillance of political opposition, the harassment of journalists and human rights defenders, and unrestricted state access to communications held or transmitted by the private sector in Africa.