Rolling Out Physical and Digital Infrastructures for Independent Professionals and The Self-Employed - EFIP Common Position Paper -
General Considerations Without physical infrastructures such as coworking space and digital infrastructures such as effective broadband and mobile coverage, the self-employed community will not be able to advance and prosper as business. These infrastructures matter to Europe. They help independent professionals to create work and perhaps most importantly are a source of sustainability, productivity, growth and innovation. As to physical infrastructures, coworking spaces empower and enable the self-employed to build networks and form project teams, share skills, contacts, work collaboratively and are hugely beneficial specifically for young people looking to develop their career as independent professionals. Consequently, coworking can help people to try out self-employment in a comparatively sheltered environment with little business risk and so broaden the scope for labour market participation. Coworking spaces are also important in a wider enterpeneurial ecosystem as resource and talent pools and even transdciplinary preincubation labs where highly innnovative ideas can emerge. Despite this, operating costs of coworking spaces might be prohibitively high for them and in some European countries independent professionals do not benefit from the same tax relief that other small businesses with premises have. In addition, local governments can do far more to allow underused and vacant buildings to become coworking spaces. As to digital infrastructures, the development of competitively-priced fast and ultra-fast internet access and high-speed broadband is key to creating economic growth and achieving the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy. The slow rollout of 4G coverage in the EU hampers flexible working and broadband and mobile connectivity is still incredibly patchy, particularly in rural areas which makes it difficult to work independently. In addition, independent professionals often need to work on the move both at home and across EU borders, and a lack of WiFi in public transports and high roaming fees result in a genuine loss of productivity. While most infrastructure investment should be funded by the private sector, there is a role for the EU to ensure that national infrastructure in the Member States keeps up with demand, set standards and the wide regulatory framework, guarantee sufficient competition, and use public funds to fill gaps where the market fails.
Policy Recommendations Against this backdrop, the EU should:
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Support the growth of coworking spaces and extend business rate relief for independent professionals who base themselves there. While it is right that rents are set by the market, Member States should review planning systems and restrictions with a clear goal of increasing the supply of affordable office space.
Incentivise local governments to use empty properties as coworking spaces, publish interactive maps of disused buildings in the area, as well as extend planning permissions and development rights to allow unused government office space to change their use.
Commit to 100% access to broadband by 2020, guarantee new housing developments have fibre-optic broadband and work with industry to accelerate the roll out of 5G mobile connectivity and free WiFi in public transport, to allow people to be more productive on the move, including the self-employed.
Provide technical assistance to national authorities to make full use of the Structural Funds and the Connecting Europe Facility Funds earmarked for investment in ICT infrastructures and high speed networks, especially in rural areas. Propose to allocate additional EU investment to co-finance national and local actions aimed at mapping existing infrastructure and prospective broadband investments.
Follow up with the development and implementation of National Broadband Plans that should meet the coverage, speed and targets defined in the Digital Agenda for Europe and support the completion of the Digital Single Market by 2015, which is a priority for the Juncker Commission. This will help Member States to achieve real competition among broadband providers that would lead to affordable prices for consumers, the roll-out of high-speed internet and cutting of roaming tariffs.
Continue to pursue the digitisation of government transactions (eGovernment), especially their cross border interoperability across the EU, with a target of 50 % of citizens to use
eGovernment by 2015. In addition, national governments should be encouraged to release more data and open up transactions using APIs to allow others to build upon them. This will create massive new opportunities for innovation by micro-businesses and technology entrepreneurs.
About the European Forum of Independent Professionals (EFIP) EFIP is a European not-for-profit collaboration of national associations which represents over 11 million of independent professionals at EU level through targeted research and advocacy. Independent professionals (often referred to as freelancers or contractors) are highly-skilled selfemployed workers without employers nor employees. They offer specialised services of an intellectual and knowledge-based nature and work on a flexible basis in a range of creative, managerial, scientific and technical occupations. With a 45% increase since 2004, they are the fastest growing segment of the EU labour market.
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EFIP mission is to strive for European policy, business and social environment to become more conducive to the independent and self-employed way of working, in both the private and public sectors. More information about EFIP is available on our Website, our Manifesto and our Campaign.
Contact Marco Torregrossa Secretary General European Forum of Independent Professionals Avenue de l’Opale 124 box 6 B-1030 Brussels (Belgium) +32.486.71.30.26 marco.torregrossa@efip.org www.efip.org EU Transparency Register N.: 823591710024-95
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