Business Commons^™

This survey collected information from EU Member States, as well as Iceland and Norway, on three issues:

 Tackling undeclared work in the collaborative economy and bogus self-employment.

 Data exchange and data protection.

 Cross-border sanctions.

Of the 28 Platform members from EU Member States as well as Iceland and Norway, 28 out of 30 responses were received. In addition, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) provided qualitative feedback on the role of social partners and their cooperation with enforcement authorities to tackle undeclared work in the areas covered by the survey.

Undeclared work represents a persistent feature of contemporary economies and results in lost public revenue, lack of worker protection and unfair competition for legitimate businesses. Conventionally, undeclared work has been viewed as an individual criminal act, which is solved by governments increasing the penalties and risks of detection in order to discourage participation. This, however, only deals with the outcome (i.e., participation in undeclared work) and does not address the drivers of this behaviour.

This report explores the formal institutional failures which make undeclared work an acceptable behaviour in the eyes of citizens and, consequently, result in high participation in …

This document sets out examples of proven approaches

and practices that Platform members and observers

have used to tackle undeclared work in Europe. The

aim is to inspire national policy-makers with tried and

tested approaches and to provide sources of further

information of how to put these concrete examples into

action.

Ÿ  Effective preventative approaches are long-term, tailored strategies. Over time, they can trigger behavioural change to declare work and increase trust in institutions. Preventative strategies should combine a range of measures and must be regularly tested, evaluated and adapted according to the results. Pilot schemes can be used to find effective ways to tailor approaches to the national context and culture. However, preventative approaches and deterrence approaches are complementary. Both can be used to tackle undeclared work.

Ÿ  Moving towards preventative measures requires a change of strategy of the role of enforcement institutions. A preventative approach requires support of all …

The last decades, many scholars highlighted the shadow economic activities, regarding their disadvantages (unemployment, impoverishment etc) and advantages (intensifies competition, flexibility in employment etc). During the financial crisis, informal activities rose in noisy way, which triggered the development of special definitions to describe a wide range of actions which in turn have gradually configured and updated the content of the shadow economy term. In this paper we present the theoretical background of the shadow economy term, by selecting the main worldwide literature published from 1973 to 2018. Many studies have tried to definite the shadow economy term but none has …

This diagnostic report evaluates the extent, nature and drivers of undeclared work in Kosovo* followed by recommendations regarding how this sphere can be tackled.