The ‘integrated worker’ in the EU competition law field

Having clarified and rationalised the EU agency acquis, Chapter 7 uses it as a basis for the development of a refined framework for distinguishing between integrated ‘workers’ and unintegrated ‘self-employed persons-undertakings’ within EU competition law. More precisely, the chapter draws upon the examples that have been provided by the ECJ and the Commission on the instances when an ‘agent’ acts like an integrated ‘worker’ and uses them as a departure point for the identification of the instances when the opposite is true, namely when a working person can be said to act like an integrated ‘agent’ (vice versa). The framework developed in this chapter is much more detailed and intricate than the one currently used within the EU competition law field to distinguish between ‘workers’ and ‘self-employed persons-undertakings’. By clarifying the type, quality, and amount of risks persons can undertake without jeopardising their integration status, and by specifying the quality and intensity of control they need to be under to be considered integrated into their principal’s undertaking, the proposed framework is much more detailed and thus more operational in practice. Furthermore, apart from being more efficient in classifying modern-day workers, the proffered framework is broader in that it allows more individuals to be captured under the ‘integrated worker’ category and hence escape competition law supervision.