"Policy considerations
• EU competition law imposes limits on the scope of collective labour law, as it precludes self-employed workers from collective bargaining .
• There is a rising number of self-employed workers whose livelihood are characterised by increasing precariousness and whose working conditions could be improved by ensuring that collective agreements fall outside the scope of competition law.
• The European Commission intends to reform the scope of EU competition law and this could offer an opportunity to define a new regulatory paradigm.
• This policy briefs discusses a possible reconfiguration of the coexistence between collective bargaining and competition law.
• Access to collective bargaining should ensure that employing businesses with a dominant bargaining position do not push labour conditions downwards."

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