MEPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) adopted a report by Alex Agius Saliba (S&D, Malta) on Tuesday 1 December (31 votes in favour, 6 against, 18 abstentions) calling for a directive to enshrine at EU level the right to disconnect.
“We are in a situation where legislation was drafted at a time when digitalisation was not as significant in our lives”, the rapporteur explained on this occasion. “So now is the right time and we now have the political momentum” to advance this right, he said.
MEPs are therefore calling on the European Commission to present a legislative framework, in this case a directive, to establish minimum requirements for remote work across the Union. They are emphasising that this framework must clarify working conditions and must ensure that working in this way is carried out on a voluntary basis. Finally, they call for the rights, workload and performance standards required of teleworkers to be equivalent to comparable workers.
The objective is that workers can effectively exercise their right to disconnect and that the use of professional digital tools is regulated. However, MEPs have also not lost sight of the framework agreement reached earlier this year by European social partners on the digitalisation of work (see EUROPE 12511/20), which already includes provisions on connection and disconnection.
Furthermore, they are calling on the European Commission to include the right to disconnection in its future proposal on the health and safety at work strategy.
The debates proved rather difficult, particularly with the EPP, who did not want a directive to be mentioned on the grounds that the social partners had concluded a framework agreement earlier in the year in order to provide a better framework for working conditions in the digital age. In the beginning, Renew Europe preferred to focus on remote working rather than solely on the right to disconnect.
To consult the report: https://bit.ly/2VpQ5XN and including the compromise amendments (all adopted): https://bit.ly/3fZqjTC (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)