Competition law is not to blame: why gig workers cannot conclude collective agreements in the EU

In his writings, Professor Hovenkamp has frequently remarked the importance of administrability. Antitrust rules have to be simple enough to be generally applicable. What this concept aims to avoid is too high a burden on judges to reconcile or balance too many conflicting rights at a time. This paper elaborates on this, to show that the best way possible to guarantee gig workers the right to bargain collectively is not to ask EU competition law to protect wealth equality, fairness, or workers’ social rights, but to ask EU competition law to take a step back when the “undertakings” at stake are individual workers, whose conditions are of utmost social importance. Albany and the subsequent case law already establishes that the protection of social rights under Articles 151-161 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) trumps the protection of competition. Therefore, on the one hand, if gig workers had access to those social rights, they could effectively defend their interests through collective bargaining; on the other hand, EU competition law is not to blame for their exclusion, because it is not the role of EU competition law to designate who should enjoy social rights