The EU: One Continent, 27 Realities
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Welcome to this issue of The Contingent Compass. Each week, I send two essays to help you navigate the complex world of the Contingent Workforce. If you need support on your journey, upgrade to a paid subscription where you’ll instantly be able to interact with the community through group chat, live Q&A’s, gain access practical program tools and useful how-to guides.
If you’ve ever tried to run a contingent workforce program across the European Union, you already know one uncomfortable truth:
There is no such thing as a unified European strategy.
Not for contingent labor. Not for risk. And definitely not for compliance.
It might look like one market on a global PowerPoint slide. But in reality? It’s a tangled web of local labor laws, cultural expectations, tax systems, co-employment risks, and wildly different enforcement attitudes. 🌍
Trying to manage a contingent workforce across Europe using a centralized, US-style playbook is like bringing a spreadsheet to a chess match.
It’s not just ineffective. It’s risky.
The Pan-European Playbook? It Doesn’t Exist.
Many global programs lean on the idea of a ‘Pan-European Playbook,’ a single set of policies and workflows that can stretch across borders. It sounds efficient. It looks neat in governance decks. But in practice? It either bloats with exceptions or becomes so watered down that it protects no one and supports nothing.
The truth is, every deviation from the playbook isn’t failure. It’s necessary customization. And the companies that try to standardize their way into compliance usually end up with gaps they can’t see until it’s too late.
The Compliance Mirage
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: compliance.
European programs often pride themselves on being "low risk." But dig deeper and that confidence usually comes from one of two places:
Blind trust in their MSP or staffing vendors to “handle it”
An assumption that if no one’s been fined, everything must be fine
Spoiler: both are dangerous.
Take Germany, for example. Misclassifying a worker can trigger criminal liability, including jail time for executives. Temporary agency labor requires a license, equal pay mandates, and strict tenure limits. Many staffing suppliers operate in full legal fog.
Meanwhile, hop across the border to the Netherlands and you’ll find a far more flexible system, but one that’s still deeply protective of worker rights and increasingly sensitive to misclassification.
Real-world vignette: A global pharma company once tried to impose UK tenure limits across all EU markets. In Spain, where local laws conflicted, this created confusion and delays, resulting in missed project deadlines and a breakdown in vendor trust.
Now try stitching those two together under one program policy. You can’t. Not really.
Each country demands its own playbook, even if your MSP or VMS promises standardization.
And in countries like Germany or France, Works Councils and Unions can bring even well-intentioned programs to a halt. If you don’t factor in their role, your rollout may never get past the starting blocks.
The Illusion of Consistency
Too many global contingent labor strategies are built on a dangerous illusion: that consistency equals control.
But consistency isn’t the goal.
Fitness for purpose is.
You can’t apply the same onboarding process, background check policy, or tenure rule across France, Poland, and Spain. What’s legal in one may be noncompliant in another.
Take worker tenure rules: In some countries, like Italy, exceeding tenure limits can lead to automatic employment obligations. In others, those rules don’t exist. If you force standard limits everywhere, you’re either overcompensating or exposing yourself.
Or consider pay parity: France mandates it. The UK encourages it. Other countries ignore it.
Real-world vignette: A tech firm’s centralized rate card model collapsed in Germany after top-performing suppliers withdrew, citing unsustainable margins and unaddressed co-employment risk. Cost controls backfired, and talent access plummeted.
The result? HR and Procurement leaders often adopt the most conservative standard and apply it across the board. That might keep you out of trouble, but it could also slow hiring, inflate costs, and create unnecessary friction.
Top 5 Mistakes Global Teams Make in Europe
Copy/pasting US rate card logic into German or Nordic markets
Imposing global tenure rules that contradict local law
Expecting suppliers to educate them on compliance nuances
Assuming GDPR rules are “one and done”
Ignoring the impact of regional pay parity laws on cost structures
Global MSPs, Local Frustration
Now let’s talk MSP models.
Many global organizations roll out their Managed Service Provider across Europe with a single governance model. That often means one central supplier selection process, one rate card, one SLA structure, and one process for worker engagement.
The problem? It rarely fits.
What works in the UK might fail in Belgium, where supplier relationships are built on decades of local trust.
What gets results in Ireland might bomb in Switzerland, where privacy laws make data transparency a minefield.
Even the VMS platform that runs smoothly in North America may violate data residency or GDPR requirements in certain European jurisdictions.
Real-world vignette: One company attempted to roll out its background check policy across France. Local privacy laws forced a full walk-back after regulators raised concerns, and the delay nearly cost them a critical product launch.
The one-size-fits-all model is seductive, but ultimately self-defeating.
EU-Wide Legislation Isn’t a Shortcut
You might think, “But the EU has directives for this, right?”
Sure. There’s the Temporary Agency Work Directive, the GDPR, and most recently, the EU Platform Work Directive.
But here’s the kicker: directives require local implementation. And that implementation varies wildly.
The EU Platform Work Directive is a great example. It aims to reclassify gig workers under certain conditions, a big deal for anyone using freelance marketplaces. But how France interprets that law could be very different from how Finland does.
You can’t rely on EU policy alone to keep you safe. You have to watch how each country enforces it, and how often that enforcement shifts.
Post-Brexit divergence: And then there’s the UK, operating just across the Channel, but increasingly on its own track. Employment law, data privacy, and worker rights are now evolving separately from the EU, meaning your UK program might start to look more like North America than northern Europe.
What This Means for Strategy
So what do you do with all this? How do you build a contingent workforce program across Europe without losing your mind or your compliance certificate?
Here’s what the best companies do:
✅ Think regionally, act locally
Build a framework at the regional level, but give each country autonomy to adapt based on local laws, norms, and candidate expectations.
✅ Avoid standardization for the sake of optics
Instead of forcing uniform processes, aim for aligned principles. Compliance, visibility, quality, and fairness can all be delivered differently depending on the context.
✅ Invest in local expertise
Your MSP isn’t a substitute for legal guidance. Engage local counsel, tap into country-specific labor advisors, and most importantly, listen to your in-country hiring managers.
✅ Reframe success metrics
Speed-to-fill in Portugal will look different from Denmark. So will supplier responsiveness. Create performance metrics that account for local market maturity, cultural norms, and regulatory constraints.
✅ Prioritize enablement, not just enforcement
Compliance matters. But so does agility. Build programs that empower local teams to make informed decisions, not ones that force them into rigid, unrealistic workflows.
A Framework That Actually Works
We often recommend a tiered governance model across Europe:
Tier 1: Local Legal Control — non-negotiables dictated by in-country law 🧾
Tier 2: Regional Strategic Alignment — shared KPIs, rate governance, tech stack 📊
Tier 3: Global Reporting Layer — executive visibility and performance benchmarking 🌐
This framework honors local law without losing sight of regional consistency or global transparency.
Time to Reflect
Ask yourself:
Is our European strategy actually tailored to Europe, or is it a North American template with new labels?
Do our suppliers have deep local expertise, or just a presence?
Are we balancing control with flexibility, or defaulting to standardization out of fear?
Are we listening to what our in-country teams need, or just telling them what to do?
Because if your strategy treats Europe as one market, you’ll always be chasing symptoms instead of solving problems.
And that’s not a strategy. That’s survival.
If you sit on the executive team, the question isn’t whether your program is compliant on paper. It’s whether it’s fit for purpose in practice. Ask yourself - are we scaling governance, or are we scaling guesswork?
We’ve seen companies lose six figures per country, per year, not from fines, but from poor time-to-fill, overpaying suppliers due to misinterpreted local norms, and compliance theater that adds layers without outcomes.
If you want to stop firefighting across your European markets and start building something scalable and smart, let’s talk.
There are a dozen firms who’ll promise European contingent labor “standardization.” There are only a handful who actually understand how to make it work, without breaking trust, the law, or the budget. I’ve led programs through that maze. And I help others do the same.
Your contingent workforce deserves better.
So do your teams.
One Last Thought...
Yes, Europe is complex. But maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe that’s the opportunity.
If you can build a compliant, agile, value-generating contingent workforce program in Europe, one that honors local law, culture, and pace, you haven’t just cracked a region.
You’ve built the blueprint for what the future of global workforce strategy really requires.
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If you need support on your journey, upgrade to a paid subscription where you’ll instantly be able to interact with the community through group chat, live Q&A’s, gain access practical program tools and useful how-to guides.