Self-employment has always been looked at with high suspicion by both lawmakers and legal scholars. The adoption of Law No. 81 traces an important line of separation with the labour law born and developed in the last century. For the first time, independent contractors become part of a community governed by special legal rules: they gain a relevant status also under employment law. The paper analyzes the impact of the new law on the traditional legal categories of subordination, on the one hand, and autonomy, on the other end