The growth of non-standard employment relations has created one of the major challenges in terms of workers' rights as well as collective representation in European societies. Among non-standard employment relations, so-called "solo self-employed"-self-employed workers without employees-are challenging the very foundations of our labor markets, that is to say the opposition between employers and employees, fostering the development of emerging "hybrid" areas of work. The heterogeneity of the solo self-employed is difficult to capture from official statistics, which are still based on traditional classifications, and questions also the legal categories that qualify these workers. Moreover, the fact that solo self-employed workers do not form a homogenous group, and are diverse in terms of their activities, interests and needs, calls for changes in the way trade unions, employer organizations, and new freelancer associations develop collective actions, claims-making activities, and strategies of organizing. With the aim to achieve an in-depth understanding of the increasingly extensive and populated categories of the solo self-employed, this contribution aims at reconstructing the state of the art within different fields of study, such as employment relations, labor law, industrial relations and social movements, and at offering some possible future research directions.

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This article aims to identify continuity between the main neoliberal schools that had a role in the making the European legal order and the conception of labour and 'work activity' embedded in the European legal framework. The consequences of this contiguity are also discussed. In particular, the concepts of 'working activity' and 'undertaking' elaborated by the Court of Justice are used as a driver of the analysis to detect signs of these influences. A two-phase approach is adopted to develop the research. First, a review is undertaken of relevant ECJ judgments that testify to the Court's position on the topics discussed in the article. Second, the cultural common ground between the interpretation of the legal framework found in case law and specific neoliberal theories is highlighted. The meta-principles that are identified through the analysis are then compared with those derived from the rights recognised in the constitutions proclaimed in the second half of the 20th century to show the significant discontinuity that endangers the very existence of the European Union as a political project and has destabilised the constitutional order of many European countries. As the founding principles of the EU legal order kickstarted a containment of labour and social rights, the call for change at the roots of European constitutional law is becoming increasingly urgent. The formal proclamation of the Charters of Fundamental Rights at the European level (not least because of the way in which rights are recognised) has not in itself proved to be capable per se of transcending the original matrix of the European order.