TL;DR

  • Most major European jurisdictions have a functional equivalent of UK IR35. The labels are different. The underlying tests are remarkably similar.
  • The common tests across regimes look at control, integration into the engager’s business, mutuality of obligation, financial risk, exclusivity, equipment, and substitution rights. A freelancer who fails several of these in any jurisdiction is exposed.
  • Enforcement intensity, not legal doctrine, is what varies most. Germany and the Netherlands have the most active reclassification machinery. France, Spain, and Italy have produced the high-profile case law. The UK has the most public-facing taxpayer process.
  • The EU Platform Work Directive will harmonise one specific corner of this landscape, platform-mediated work, through a rebuttable presumption of employment. Non-platform B2B freelancing is not directly affected.
  • Non-resident freelancers are not automatically safe. The engaging company in country X can still be exposed under country X’s classification rules. The freelancer’s own status under country Y’s rules is a separate, parallel question. The two layers can both bite.

What “IR35-equivalent” actually means

“IR35” is shorthand. In its original UK form it refers to a specific anti-avoidance regime aimed at off-payroll working through an intermediary, typically a Personal Service Company. The deeper point is that almost every European jurisdiction has a doctrine that asks the same underlying question: when is a contract for services actually a contract of employment?

The legal answer everywhere in Europe is similar in shape. Tribunals and tax authorities do not take the label at face value. They look at the substance of the working relationship and apply a multi-factor test. The factors recur, with national variations, across the UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Those factors are, broadly:

  • Control. Who decides when, where, and how the work is done?
  • Integration. Is the worker embedded in the engager’s organisation, attending its meetings, using its email domain, appearing on its org chart, sitting in its office?
  • Mutuality of obligation. Is there an ongoing expectation that the engager will offer work and the worker will accept it?
  • Substitution. Can the worker send someone else to do the job?
  • Financial risk. Does the worker carry real business risk, fixed costs, the possibility of loss?
  • Exclusivity and multiple clients. Does the worker have a real portfolio of clients, or does the income come almost entirely from one source?
  • Equipment and infrastructure. Whose laptop, whose tools, whose subscription?

If these factors point toward employment, the relationship can be reclassified, regardless of what the contract says and regardless of whether the worker is invoicing through a limited company, an autónom@ registration, an Estonian OÜ, or a French micro-entreprise.

The local consequences of reclassification vary. In some jurisdictions the engaging company picks up the back tax and social security bill. In some, the worker does. In some, both.

This is the practical reality behind the “IR35-equivalent” label. The mental model travels. The specifics do not.

UK IR35 in 60 seconds

IR35 in its original form sits in Chapter 8 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (ITEPA). It applies where a worker provides services through an intermediary, usually a Personal Service Company, in circumstances where, were it not for the intermediary, the worker would have been an employee of the end client.

Two later sets of reforms shifted who is responsible for making and acting on that determination:

  • April 2017. Public-sector engagers became responsible for assessing IR35 status and operating PAYE on payments to in-scope contractors.
  • April 2021. That responsibility was extended to medium and large private-sector engagers under Chapter 10 of ITEPA. Small private-sector engagers, defined by reference to the Companies Act 2006 thresholds, remained outside the new regime.

HMRC publishes the Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool, intended to walk an engager or a worker through the status questions. CEST is not legally binding and has been criticised for failing to apply mutuality of obligation correctly, but it is the public face of the regime.

The underlying employment-status tests are not statutory. They sit in common-law case law going back decades (Ready Mixed Concrete, Hall v Lorimer, Autoclenz, more recent cases on substitution clauses), and they are the same tests an employment tribunal would apply if a contractor argued they were really an employee.

This is the framework people are thinking of when they say “IR35-equivalent.” Now to the rest of Europe.

Country-by-country

Germany: Scheinselbständigkeit

Germany has the most developed and most actively enforced regime in this group. The relevant concepts are:

  • Scheinselbständigkeit (“disguised self-employment”), governed primarily by §7 SGB IV (Social Code, Book IV) and §611a BGB (Civil Code).
  • Arbeitnehmerähnliche Person (“employee-like person”), a separate doctrine that gives certain protections to economically dependent self-employed workers who are not full employees.

The Deutsche Rentenversicherung (DRV) runs the Statusfeststellungsverfahren, a formal status-determination procedure that an engager or a worker can request. The Bundessozialgericht has produced a long and consistent line of case law on the factors that point toward employment: integration into the engager’s operation, following instructions on time and place of work, no own business infrastructure, no own employees, work for essentially one client, no entrepreneurial risk.

If a relationship is reclassified, the consequences are heavy. Social security contributions are owed retroactively, typically four years and in some cases longer, and the engager is generally liable for both the employer and the employee share. Criminal liability for the engager is possible in cases of intent.

Scheinselbständigkeit is not new in 2026. Any claim of a specific 2026 reform should be checked against the Bundesgesetzblatt and the DRV’s own guidance before being relied on.

Spain: falsos autónomos and the Riders’ Law

The Spanish doctrine of falsos autónomos has been built primarily by the Tribunal Supremo and the social-jurisdiction courts, alongside inspections by the Inspección de Trabajo y Seguridad Social. The general test looks at economic dependency on one client, integration into the client’s productive organisation, lack of business risk for the worker, and the worker’s freedom (or lack of it) to set their own working conditions.

The headline statutory development of the last few years is Real Decreto-Ley 9/2021, popularly known as the Riders’ Law, passed in 2021 in the wake of repeated Tribunal Supremo decisions reclassifying platform delivery riders as employees. The Riders’ Law inserted into the Estatuto de los Trabajadores a rebuttable presumption that platform-mediated delivery workers are employees, where the algorithm in effect controls the work.

For freelancers and autónom@s outside platform delivery, the broader doctrine still applies on a case-by-case basis. An autónom@ working full-time for a single Spanish company, embedded in that company’s structure, is exposed regardless of whether they are invoicing in or out of Spain.

A note on Verifactu, the Spanish electronic-invoicing and anti-fraud regime: this is sometimes wrongly described as an IR35-equivalent. It is not. Verifactu changes how invoices are issued and reported to AEAT. It does not change the underlying employment-status doctrine. The two regimes are separate.

France: salariat déguisé

The French doctrine of salariat déguisé (disguised salaried employment) rests on Article L1221-1 of the Code du travail and on a long line of Cour de cassation jurisprudence applying the lien de subordination (subordination link) test. The test focuses on whether the worker is performing the work under the authority of an employer who can give orders and directives, monitor the work, and sanction failures.

The headline case is the Cour de cassation decision of 4 March 2020 (n° 19-13.316), which reclassified an Uber driver as an employee. The ruling reaffirmed that the existence of a written contract describing the relationship as self-employed does not prevent reclassification where the substance points to subordination.

For non-platform freelancers, the same doctrine applies. URSSAF, the social-security collection body, can pursue reclassification and the resulting back-contribution claim. Reclassification can also expose the engager to criminal liability for travail dissimulé (concealed work) under Article L8221-1.

Italy: lavoro parasubordinato and co.co.co.

Italy has a layered system rather than a single test. The relevant categories are:

  • Lavoro subordinato. Full employment under Article 2094 of the Codice Civile.
  • Lavoro parasubordinato. A statutory category of semi-subordinate work, originally under D.Lgs. 276/2003 (the Biagi Law).
  • Collaborazione coordinata e continuativa (co.co.co.). The structured form of semi-subordinate work.
  • Lavoro autonomo. Genuine self-employment.

D.Lgs. 81/2015 (the Jobs Act) reformed how these categories interact. Under Article 2 of that decree, a co.co.co. relationship can be reclassified into full employment if the engager organises the worker’s time and place of work. The 2019 amendments extended this principle to platform-mediated work.

The Italian system therefore offers an intermediate category that other European jurisdictions do not. That can be useful for structuring genuinely hybrid relationships. It also means freelancers operating in Italy need to understand which category their work actually falls into, and the line between co.co.co. and full reclassification is the one most likely to bite.

Netherlands: DBA and the move to Wet VBAR

The Dutch position is unusually unstable and needs verification at the point of any decision.

The current statutory framework is the Wet Deregulering Beoordeling Arbeidsrelaties (Wet DBA), in force since 2016. Wet DBA was designed to replace the earlier VAR system and put responsibility for assessing the relationship on the engager and the worker jointly, with the Belastingdienst checking after the fact.

Wet DBA has been controversial since the day it passed. Enforcement has been paused and partially restored in a series of moratoria, with the Belastingdienst announcing that full enforcement would resume only in defined circumstances. The replacement framework, the Wet verduidelijking beoordeling arbeidsrelaties en rechtsvermoeden (Wet VBAR), has been in legislative development for several years and would introduce, among other things, a rebuttable presumption of employment below a certain hourly rate.

Anyone making decisions about Dutch ZZP (self-employed) contracts in 2026 should check the live state of Wet VBAR and the current enforcement posture of the Belastingdienst before relying on any guidance, including this one. Both have moved repeatedly.

Belgium: Programmawet criteria

Belgium codified its approach in the Programmawet of 27 December 2006 (Articles 328 and following), which laid out general and sector-specific criteria for distinguishing employees from the self-employed.

The four general criteria are: the will of the parties as expressed in the contract, the freedom to organise working time, the freedom to organise the work itself, and the possibility of exercising hierarchical control. None of these is individually decisive, but together they shape the analysis.

For specified sectors (construction, transport, cleaning, agriculture, security, among others), the law adds rebuttable presumptions based on lists of indicators. If a certain number of indicators point toward employment, the relationship is presumed to be employment unless rebutted.

Belgium’s regime is more rule-based on its face than the UK’s purely common-law approach, but the underlying questions are the same.

The EU Platform Work Directive: what it does and does not harmonise

The EU Platform Work Directive was politically agreed in 2024 after extended trilogue negotiations. Its core mechanism is a rebuttable presumption of employment for platform workers, triggered where the relationship meets a set of criteria pointing to direction and control by the platform. Member states have a transposition window (verify the exact deadline against the published Directive text at the point of publication) to translate the framework into national law.

Two things the Directive does:

  • It harmonises the platform-work corner of the classification landscape across the 27 member states.
  • It puts the burden on the platform to rebut the presumption, rather than on the worker to prove employment.

Two things the Directive does not do:

  • It does not directly affect freelance B2B relationships outside the platform-work definition.
  • It does not create a single European employment-status test. The underlying national doctrines remain.

For a freelancer who has nothing to do with platform work (a designer working for a Berlin agency from her base in Valencia, say), the Directive’s direct relevance is limited. The indirect relevance is that it sets a tone. Classification enforcement is intensifying across Europe, and the political direction of travel is toward catching more disguised employment, not less.

The cross-border trap

This is the part that catches both freelancers and the companies that hire them.

Imagine an Indian freelancer, tax-resident in Estonia under the digital nomad visa, invoicing a German Mittelstand client for software development work. Three layers of law potentially apply:

  • Estonian classification rules. Is she genuinely self-employed under Estonian law for the purposes of her local tax and social security treatment?
  • German classification rules. Is the German client, in substance, engaging her as a disguised employee under §7 SGB IV? If yes, the German client is exposed to retroactive social-security liability regardless of the freelancer’s residence.
  • The cross-border allocation rules (social security coordination under EU Regulation 883/2004 where applicable, double tax treaties, A1 certificates, the place of effective management of any intermediary company).

The freelancer can be a perfectly clean autónom@ / FIE / sole trader under the rules of her country of residence and the engaging company can still be exposed under the rules of its country. A German client paying a foreign freelancer who looks, in substance, like an integrated employee can be told by the DRV to pay retroactive social-security contributions, even though the freelancer is non-resident in Germany. The “she’s not in our system” defence is not a defence.

The same shape applies to a UK freelancer in Spain working for a French client, or to a US contractor based in Portugal working for a Dutch agency. The classification rules of the engaging company’s country can still bite the engaging company. The freelancer’s own status under her country of residence’s rules is a separate, parallel question.

Both layers can produce a tax assessment. Neither layer cancels the other out. This is what the research literature calls the compliance trap, and it is the single most underappreciated risk in cross-border freelancing.

Practical defence

There is no magic contractual phrase that immunises a relationship from reclassification. There are, however, recurring features of relationships that survive scrutiny across all of these jurisdictions.

  • Multiple clients. A genuine portfolio. Not “I have three clients but 95% of my income is from one of them.” A real spread.
  • Substitution rights, exercised at least occasionally. A substitution clause that has never been used is weak evidence. A substitution that has actually happened, even once, is strong evidence.
  • Own equipment and infrastructure. Your laptop, your subscriptions, your professional indemnity insurance, your own office or coworking arrangement.
  • Own commercial identity. Website, branded invoices, a published rate card, marketing activity. Things that show you are a business in your own right.
  • Real business risk. Fixed costs that you carry regardless of whether you have work. Skin in the game.
  • Project-based scope. Defined deliverables, not “available 9 to 5 Monday to Friday.”
  • No integration markers. No engager email address, no engager-issued laptop, no appearance on the engager’s organisational chart, no attendance at all-hands meetings as a participant rather than a contributor.
  • Contract drafted around substance. A contract that describes the relationship as a contract for services, not a contract of service, and that is consistent with how the relationship actually operates. Contracts that contradict the lived reality of the work are the easiest evidence for an inspector to use.
  • Audit trail. Keep the records. The invoices to other clients. The marketing. The accountant correspondence. The substitution event. Reclassification cases are won and lost on evidence, not on assertion.

The structural principle that runs through all of this: structure for the worst-case classification view, not the best-case. The country with the most aggressive enforcement view in your supply chain is the one you should be ready to argue with.

What to watch

Three things are moving.

The EU Platform Work Directive will transpose into national law over the next eighteen months or so, depending on the member state. This will not solve cross-border B2B classification, but it will raise the political salience of the question and create domestic case law in jurisdictions that have so far not produced much.

National enforcement is intensifying. DRV status determinations in Germany, URSSAF audits in France, and Inspección de Trabajo activity in Spain have all been described in recent professional commentary as more active than they were five years ago. Verify the trend lines against current government statistics before relying on them, but the direction is consistent.

National freelancer regimes are themselves being reformed. The Dutch Wet VBAR is the clearest example, and others are likely to follow. Anyone whose business model depends on a specific national classification framework should be tracking that framework’s reform pipeline, not assuming it is stable.

The summary view is straightforward. “IR35-equivalent” is a useful mental model. It is not an exact analogy. The structural tests are similar everywhere. The enforcement reality, the consequences of reclassification, and the cross-border interaction patterns are jurisdiction-specific. If your work crosses a border, get country-specific legal advice in both countries, not one.

This piece is a map, not a route. The route is yours to plan, with help from people qualified to give it.