The Regulation of working time in the EU

Working time is an important component of health and safety at work. It is deeply anchored in the EU acquis. Article 31 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000) states that fair and just working conditions include the right to the limitation of maximum working hours, to daily and weekly rest periods and to an annual period of paid leave .

The EU’s working time directive (2003/88/EC) sets the minimum standards currently applicable throughout the EU .The main aim of the directive is to protect workers’ health and safety, in line with principle 10 of the European Pillar of Social Rights, which covers a healthy, safe and well-adapted work environment. It requires EU Member States to guarantee a limit to weekly working hours (i.e. the average working time for each 7-day period must not exceed 48 hours, including overtime), breaks, daily and weekly rest periods, paid annual leave and special protection for night workers, while allowing for derogations from most of these rights (see Appendix 2 for further details).

Statutory limits and actual hours vary across Member States.Statutory weekly hours are either capped at the limit of 48 hours as set by the working time directive or at a lower level of 40 hours, with the exception of Belgium and France, where the statutory limits are set at lower levels (38 and 35 hours, respectively) . Collectively bargained maximum weekly hours are typically lower and play a more important role in some EU Member States. The average for collectively agreed normal weekly working hours in 2020 was 37.8 in the EU (Eurofound, 2021) . Overtime is capped in most Member States at 48 hours per week. These upper limits on hours worked have not changed in the EU in recent years. Average normal annual hours differ significantly between Member States not only because of differences in weekly hours, but also due to provisions for vacation time. Annual normal working hours vary between the two extremes of 1 574 (in Germany) and 1 848 (Hungary and Poland).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Member States introduced regulatory changes to allow for both increases and decreases in working time.Updated rules extended the use of telework and adapted the rules on the organisation of working time. To allow for the provision of essential or critical services (such as healthcare) and to accommodate the increased workload of workers in these sectors, a number of Member States created new possibilities to extend working time by increasing the maximum daily and weekly working times and possibilities to work overtime or by reducing the duration of the minimum daily or weekly rest. Most of these measures were temporary and are no longer in force. At the same time, short-time work or partial unemployment schemes allowed working time to be reduced, or the duty to perform work to be suspended altogether, with compensation for loss of income.

Notes

  1. Working time regulations can accomplish other aims, too, such as the coordination of leisure time. This is the aim of regulations on shop opening hours. Such regulations face the trade-off between economic efficiency and the welfare gains experienced by coordinating leisure time across individuals (for example, members of the same family).
  2. The EU’s working time directive (Directive 2003/88/EC) has replaced the first working time directive (Directive 1993/104/EC).
  3. Economic lessons that can be drawn from these cross-country differences in working time developments are discussed in detail in Sections 3.4. and 3.5.
  4. Averages across country groups were calculated by Eurofound. The weights used are based on relative country sizes in terms of employment.