Reshaping EU Working-Time Regulation: Towards a More Sustainable Regime

The European Commission's 2015 Roadmap on work-life balance cites a comprehensive policy and regulatory approach as essential to addressing the interrelated goals of reconciling work and family, the sharing of care work between women and men, and attaining substantive gender equality. However, the EU's key instrument setting ‘normal’ hours of work standards, the Working Time Directive, is absent from the measures identified as central to such a comprehensive approach. Attributing this omission in part to the Directive's historic evolution, its controversial and unsettled status, and its apparent gender ‘neutrality’, this article argues that work-life balance strategies must incorporate standard working-time considerations if they are to be effective; likewise, a more meaningful engagement with and the advancement of work-family reconciliation and equality goals is crucial for the Working Time Directive's continued relevance. Failing such a more obvious articulation between the two sets of policies, a number of goals currently on the EU agenda will be difficult to attain, as supporting caregivers and redistributing unpaid work between women and men, but also objectives of active aging and Europe's long-term social sustainability, require the development of more sustainable work models and working-time practices.