Covid-19 and Self-employment: emergency measures and unsolved challenges

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on the present world of work and will probably characterize any future debate regarding labour law. The crisis is throwing millions of people across the globe out of employment and high resonance is paid to European governments’ emergency measures to cope with this exogenous catastrophe. Public interventions are driven to protect subordinate workers and their incomes or to support self-employed workers highly affected by lockdown measures. The emergency and temporary measures for this latter group of workers are different from Country to Country, although similar patterns can be identified, varying from the extension of social security coverage to short-term support schemes. Their effectiveness is currently under discussion, alongside some concerns about the future of self-employed workers are still pending.