This section of Eurofound’s web repository on the platform economy aims to provide an overview of the various initiatives that exist or that have been implemented in relation to activities in the platform economy. As the platform economy itself is very heterogeneous, so are these initiatives. Therefore, Eurofound takes a broad understanding of ‘initiative’, which can be approximated as any organised attempt to:
- manage platform economy based activities in order to ensure compliance with rules and regulations (for example, in August 2018, the city of Vienna announced a cooperation with an accommodation platform to ensure tax compliance of its users);
- any non-institutionalised attempt to provide ancillary support services for platform workers, platform companies or clients (for example, workers providing each other trouble shooting assistance on a forum);
- any proposed or undertaken action with the aim of representing actors in the platform economy in the public or political sphere (for example, Deliveroo bike couriers forming a ‘Riders Union’).
The overview organises initiatives by their function. As some initiatives have more than one function, they can occur under several headings.
This overview presents a list of initiatives known to Eurofound and does not by any means claim to be exhaustive. Furthermore, the following does not constitute any assessment of initiatives either by including them or absenting them from the list. The descriptions of the initiatives use the terms denoted by the initiatives themselves to describe their area of operation, for example ‘sharing economy’, the ‘collaborative economy’, the ‘platform economy’ or otherwise.