The European Parliament on Wednesday approved a forthcoming law on when workers on platforms like Uber and Deliveroo should be treated as employees.
Platforms have argued that such workers are self-employed, excluding them from some European Union labour rights such as paid holidays and sick leave.
The Platform Work Directive would classify workers on "gig-economy" apps as employees in cases where platforms control factors such as how much money workers are paid or their working hours, or supervise their performance electronically.
EU legislators approved by 554 votes to 56 a draft legal text agreed between negotiators for the parliament and the 27 member states.
The new rules mean platform workers will be "governed by objective employment conditions," said Elisabetta Gualmini, the centre-left EU lawmaker from Italy who led the parliament's negotiating team.
Under the legislation, algorithms used for staffing and human resources would be made more transparent to ensure automated systems are monitored by staff. Workers may also contest automated decisions.
"We must not prohibit genuine self-employment, but this is the first time that we are having greater transparency when it comes to algorithms which are used in the platform," Gualmini said in a speech to the parliament.
"It's important. We had someone who actually drowned during an incident and then was informed that he had been dismissed with an automatically generated message - that is, once he had passed away, delivering a pizza."
EU countries' senior diplomats approved the deal in March, but it still needs the final sign-off from ministers to become law.
The burden of proof will be on the digital platform to show that workers are not employees.