The European Parliament puts forward proposals on employees's right to disconnect digitally from work outside working hours and during holiday. MEPs stressed during the plenary session (18-21 of January) that the legislation and provisions on working time must be respected, even more in COVID-19 times when so many are working from home. Extracts from the debate (20/01) with statements by Alex AGIUS SALIBA (S&D, MT), Rapporteur, Nicolas SCHMIT, European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights,Tomáš ZDECHOVSKÝ (EPP, CZ),Yana TOOM (RE, EE), MATTHIEU Sara (Greens/EFA, BE), Beate SZYDŁO (ECR, PL) and from the final vote (21/01).

Brussels

SCHMIT, Nicolas (LU, EC)

statement

debate

plenary session

vote

ZDECHOVSKÝ, Tomáš (EPP, CZ)

SZYDŁO, Beata (ECR, PL)

TOOM, Jana (Renew, EE)

working conditions in the EU (T)

AGIUS SALIBA, Alex (S&D, MT)

right to disconnect (T)

The right to disconnect: extracts from the debate (20/01) and from the final vote

Title: The right to disconnect: extracts from the debate (20/01) and from the final vote

SOUNDBITE (English), Alex AGIUS SALIBA (S&amp;D, MT), Rapporteur, We all have been in situations where we receive work-related calls, emails, and we feel obliged to reply. More than ever, in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic the increase of telework and working from home, we have become victims, victims of our phones, of our emails, of our computers. The Covid19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we work and we must therefore update our rules.

SOUNDBITE (English), Alex AGIUS SALIBA (S&amp;D, MT), Rapporteur, The human cost is high from unpaid overtime to exhaustion, to burnout. It is fundamental that we protect workers from the invasion of their rest time and to ensure that their right to rest and leisure and the maximum limit of the workday are safeguarded. And for this, we need the right to disconnect, to become a fundamental right, a fundamental right to each and every worker throughout our union.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nicolas SCHMIT, European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, People are not robots. People have limits. So, if you want to have a better productivity you cannot just occupy people 24 hours a day and seven days a week. So, I think this is an important contribution, economic and social again. And this shows the importance of this right to disconnect for the good functioning, for the good functioning of companies.

SOUNDBITE (French), Nicolas SCHMIT, European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, But at European level, I have some problems in accepting the fact that there's only certain nationals, certain workers in certain countries that have this right, not all Europeans. That's not what the European social model is all about.

SOUNDBITE (Czech), Tom&#225;&#353; ZDECHOVSK&#221; (EPP, CZ), The Corona crisis has shown that people can indeed work from home, but that very often we have not set the conditions under which they will work from home. Many people could not adapt to this environment. In other words, that they needed to get the children off to school in the morning, deal with work phone calls, and afterwards deal with email that was mounting up. I also have small children and I know what it's like to be with them at home all the time.

SOUNDBITE (English), Yana TOOM (RE, EE), We all know, theoretically, that we have a working and written directive. We know how many hours we are supposed to work and how many hours we are supposed to rest. But do we really act accordingly? Sometimes not, let's be honest. And I believe that we have to deal with this problem not only on legislative and European level, but also here in this House and everywhere.

SOUNDBITE (Dutch), MATTHIEU Sara (Greens/EFA, BE), But also for the employers it's important. Without healthy workers, things won't move forward. And especially for women who have many additional care tasks on the same time that they must be available for the employer. This creates more health risks and puts extra pressure on them.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Beate SZYD&#321;O (ECR, PL), Oline work, on one hand provides advantages because we can defend ourselves from Covid19 and carry on working but it has disadvantages because it blurs the line between work and time off. And we can't accept the fact that people don't have a right to a private life.

Announcement of the vote on the Alex AGIUS SALIBA (S&amp;D, MT) report on the Right to disconnect. Parliament consented to the agreement by 472 votes, with 126 against and 83 abstentions.