After years of negotiations, the European Union has provisionally agreed to new rules to improve the labor conditions of people working in such jobs as delivery and ride-hailing, potentially affecting millions of gig workers.

It’s believed that right now, there are close to 500 digital work platforms in the EU employing about 28 million people, although it’s estimated that by 2025, the number could rise to 43 million – a sizable chunk of the EU’s 448 million population.

The European Parliament and E.U. member states have now agreed that as many as 5.5 million who currently work as independent contractors should be classified as staff, which will grant them more social rights and benefits. That means they would be subject to a legal minimum wage, receive health insurance and have options for paid leave and sick days. Once they are classified as staff, they would also qualify for unemployment benefits.

“It is a historic deal because, basically, for the first time, we build up a framework of social rights for millions of workers in Europe who are among the most the precarious,” said Elisabetta Gualmini, rappoteur and member of the European Parliament. “This is the first act that deals with the labor market of the future.”

The agreement, under the Platform Work Directive, also contains transparency provisions, which means the companies that own the apps will need to make it clear to the worker how their algorithms work and how their behavior affects decisions taken by automated systems, including such decisions as “robo-firing.”

“With the new rules, platforms will be prohibited from taking certain important decisions, such as dismissals and decisions to suspend an account, without human oversight,” said the European Parliament in a press release. “The text also ensures more human oversight on the decisions of systems that directly affect the persons performing platform work.”

Before the directive becomes a reality, it will have to be formally adopted by both Parliament and Council, but this may be just a matter of time now. The Wild West of the gig economy seems to be coming to an end, as is evident in rulings in the U.K. The U.S. Department of Labor last year also discussed a proposal that would shake up the gig economy.

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