Contracting is thriving throughout Europe and not just in the UK. The growth of the contracting sector elsewhere in Europe is easily overlooked. But contracting and freelancing is increasingly the key to reigniting growth, innovation and prosperity in Europe’s sluggish economies. Including, of course, the UK’s.
PCG’s Managing Director John Brazier highlighted the increasing intensity of contracting activity elsewhere in Europe in his exclusive article for ContractorCalculator. He pointed out that PCG is “intensely active in engaging with organisations throughout Europe”. That includes: contractor membership bodies such as the newly formed European Forum for Independent Professionals (EFIP); more established business organisations like the European Small Business Alliance and think tanks such as the Lisbon Council.
Each represents thriving contracting and freelance sectors in other parts of Europe, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavia. In fact, in its recent policy brief, The Rise of the Micro-Multinational, the Lisbon Council draws attention to Eurostat data estimating that 32.6m European workers are self-employed – that’s 15% of the European workforce. And 23m of these self-employed workers are freelancers or contractors working in one-person companies.
So in Europe, the UK is not alone in having a thriving contracting sector. And it is these dynamic contractors and freelancers that the Lisbon Council proposes are the key hope for Europe’s return to growth and prosperity. It says that, “entrepreneurs, freelancers and the self-employed are in a position unlike ever before to become the engine of jobs, growth, innovation and future prosperity”.
This position is close to the views of Professor Andrew Burke, founding director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurial Performance and Economics at Cranfield School of Management. Burke presented key research to MPs on the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Freelance Sector at the Houses of Parliament earlier this year. It identifies contractors and freelancers as key enablers of enterprise, entrepreneurship and growth.
Via enabling technologies, contractors and freelancers are becoming “micro-multinationals”, a term coined by the Lisbon Council, able to access international markets that were once only the preserve of major transnational corporations. Online service providers, such as PeoplePerHour, Elance and oDesk, enable individual contractors to become exporters and secure contracts across national borders.
This all goes to highlight that contractors not only have huge market opportunities throughout Europe, but may also find themselves called upon to apply their creativity, skills and flexibility to reinvigorate ailing Eurozone economies. With established economic models and ways of working failing to deliver the growth Europe needs to emerge from recession, it could be that contracting emerges as Europe’s last hope.