This article analyses unemployment protection for platform workers and the self-employed in Belgium. In Belgium, the self-employed were traditionally not covered for unemployment, but since the 1990s, several steps have been taken to provide some protection. The scheme in place, now called the ‘bridging right’, has been regularly revised and extended, with the most recent reforms in 2022 and 2023. The Belgian legislator also took some initiatives to regulate platform work, by adopting, for example, legislation on the labour status of platform workers (2022). Platform workers are not treated as a separate category in Belgium with regard to unemployment, and they fall either under the scheme for employees or for the self-employed. In this paper, we will highlight the difficulties faced by platform workers in accessing unemployment protection, both under the scheme for employees and under the self-employed scheme. The analysis in this article shows that although important steps have been taken, several coverage gaps remain, in particular for platform workers, the solo (economically dependent) self-employed and persons who work in self-employment as a side activity.

中文翻译：

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比利时个体户和平台工人的失业保护

本文分析了比利时平台工人和自营职业者的失业保障。在比利时，个体经营者传统上不受失业保障，但自 20 世纪 90 年代以来，采取了多项措施来提供一些保护。该计划现在被称为“过渡权”，定期进行修订和扩展，最近一次改革将于 2022 年和 2023 年进行。比利时立法者还采取了一些举措来规范平台工作，例如通过了关于平台工人的劳动状况（2022年）。在比利时，平台工人在失业方面不被视为一个单独的类别，他们要么属于雇员计划，要么属于个体经营者计划。在本文中，我们将重点介绍平台工人在雇员计划和自营职业计划下获得失业保护所面临的困难。本文的分析表明，尽管已经采取了重要步骤，但仍然存在一些覆盖范围差距，特别是对于平台工作人员、个体（经济依赖）自营职业者和以自营职业作为副业的人员。