The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, or Eurofound, published a report on Thursday 7 February showing that, in the majority of EU Member States, the number and percentage of fathers taking parental or paternity leave has increased over the past decade.
Produced at the request of the European Commission, as part of the implementation of the recently adopted European Directive on work-life balance for parents and carers (see EUROPE 12179), this report updates the available data on paternity and parental leave for fathers in the European Union and Norway.
The main conclusion: while the equal sharing of parental responsibilities remains low across the EU, the number of fathers taking parental leave or paternity leave has increased in most Member States over the last ten years.
According to the report, all Member States now provide for a right for fathers to spend time with their children while continuing to receive remuneration.
With regard to paternity leave, the report initially reveals that, although paternity leave at the time of the child's birth is generally well paid - in most cases without significant loss of income - the periods are generally very short.
An analysis of these short periods of leave reserved exclusively for fathers then shows that, among the fathers who are eligible for it, a relatively high rate of fathers take paternity leave in most of the Member States for which data was available.
As for the right to parental leave for fathers, the report indicates that, although the use of this right is increasing, uptake of this benefit remains insufficient.
Parental leave is indeed generally less well paid than paternity leave and, in some countries, it remains a family right rather than an individual right.
In addition, some legal frameworks retain the principle that the mother is the main beneficiary of leave policies rather than both parents together, resulting in the exclusion of a number of fathers from such leave.
The report can be found here: https://bit.ly/2t89RJf. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot - intern)