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It's actually good intentions. If you only have one customer, they push you in the direction of full employment to make sure you're not being exploited. Employment (in Germany) has health insurance included and your employer pays into your retirement fund. And of course minimum wage! Although that shouldn't be an issue in anything IT related.

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I get the argument this was done for low-paid jobs to prevent worker's exploitation. However, it complicates life of highly paid consultants that e.g. work remotely as they are traveling around the world or get quick short-term highly paid gigs from all over the world (imagine Deep Learning freelancers). Legislation doesn't like that as regular payment to retirement funds has a priority (i.e. paying off current retired persons instead of saving money for one's advanced age).

It doesn't change much. You can make more money being a freelancer and pay separately for your healthcare and retirement fund; There's no free lunch

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