1. MISSOC NETWORK MEETING Bratislava, 10-11 November 2017
Review of the descriptions of social protection for the self-employed Marcel Fink, ESPN expert & Terry Ward, MISSOC Secretariat

2. Background
The Europe 2020 strategy stresses that self-employment and entrepreneurship are crucial for responding to the ongoing economic and labour market structural transformations (ICT progress, globalisation, population ageing, climate change).
Social protection of self-employment represents an intersectional issue in the First preliminary outline of a European Pillar of Social Rights.
Inadequate and/or costly access to social protection can deter people from engaging in self-employed activity.

3. Background
Lack of access to adequate levels of social protection can discourage shifts from inactivity into work and transitions between waged employment and self-employment.
It exposes many of those with insufficient coverage to risk of poverty and may mean they have to rely on minimal levels of income support
It can equally deter the self-employed from participating in social insurance schemes and so undermine the financing of social protection.
 Need for accurate and comparable information on social protection for self-employed in MISSOC
 Covering “new” forms of self employment as well as traditional ones.

4. Self-employment in the EU
In 2015, around 15% of the total in work were self-employed in the EU with the largest shares in Greece (32%) and Romania (30%) and the smallest in Sweden (5%) and Luxembourg (6%).
Compared with 2000, the share had decline by 2 percentage points (ppt.) in the EU overall, with the largest falls in Romania, Lithuania and Hungary and the largest increases in Slovakia, the UK and Slovenia.
But the overall decline conceals an increase in the self-employed without employees – i.e. independents - who are most likely to have inadequate social protection coverage
In 2015, less than a third of self-employed in the EU had any employees– i.e. most were solo self-employed or independents.
In all countries, more than half of the self-employed were independents, the smallest shares being in Hungary, Germany, Austria and Denmark (50-60%), the largest in the UK, the Czech Republic and Greece (80% or more) and above all in Romania (almost 95%)).

5. Self-employment in MISSOC
The current MISSOC tables on the self-employed provide valuable information about the situation in the different countries.
But:
for some countries the information given on the points indicated above is much less detailed and less complete than for others – in some cases, for example, the focus is on financing and less on other aspects;
the information given is not always set out in a uniform way which makes comparisons between countries difficult;
for a number of countries, the section on ‘Basic principles’ does not mention which risks are covered;
It is not always clear how the situation of the self-employed differs from that of employees, which is a central purpose of the tables

6. New suggested common structure for self-employment tables
1. Definition of self-employment

7. New suggested common structure for MISSOC on self-employment
2. Basic principles: system design and risks covered

8. New suggested common structure for MISSOC on self-employment
3. Financing social protection for the self-employed

9. New suggested common structure for MISSOC on self-employment
4. Description of systems regarding different social risks

10. New suggested common structure for MISSOC on self-employment
4. Description of systems regarding different social risks
And so on for the other social risks.
NOTE: in cases of specific systems for different categories of self-employed, information should be given for each of them.

11. Expected outcomes
Provision of better information for assessing systems of social protection for the self-employed.
Increased depth of information available for all countries and improved comparability and completeness.
More user-friendly way in which information is presented.
Though information that can be presented in MISSOC is inevitably limited, it can serve as the starting-point for further international comparative analysis and as a means of monitoring related developments.

12. Thank you for you attention