Abstract

The text analyses the possible variations of the notion of worker in national legal systems and in EU case law as a key to providing access to the standard employment relationship, and subsequently establishes that the segmentation and fragmentation of protection afforded by labour law, through ‘atypical’ forms of employment, is very widespread and increasing, and this trend is amplified by the presence of self-employment as a key to the new forms of employment in the digital age. The article criticises these regulatory processes on the basis of a neo-regulatory approach, which, however, is lacking institutional support either in the European Union or in its Member States.