Unit 2.1: Work-Life Balance Directive and National Transposition

Theoretical Content

Work–Life Balance Directive and National Application

Over the past decade, the question of how to reconcile employment with family and care responsibilities has become increasingly urgent in Europe. Rising women participation in the labour market, the ageing of the population, and the persistent imbalance in the division of care work between women and men have drawn attention to the structural barriers that prevent genuine gender equality. Women continue to bear the greatest share of unpaid care, whether for children, older relatives or family members with disabilities. This imbalance is one of the main reasons for women’s lower employment rates, their interrupted careers, and the resulting gender pay and pension gaps. Against this background, the European Union adopted the Work–Life Balance Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/1158) in June 2019, marking a significant step forward in recognising the right to care as a dimension of both social and gender justice.

The Directive entered into force in August 2019, with a deadline for transposition into national law set for 2 August 2022. It belongs to a broader EU agenda aimed at strengthening equality and social rights, alongside the European Pillar of Social Rights, the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025, the European Care Strategy (2022), and the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021–2030. By establishing new rights and strengthening existing ones and introducing minimum standards applicable to all Member States, the Directive aims to:

Foster a better balance between professional and personal life;
Increase women’s participation in the labour market;
Promote a more equal distribution of care responsibilities between men and women;
Support unpaid caregivers and improve their economic security.

Key Provisions of the Work–Life Balance Directive

At its core, the Directive establishes four main rights.

Paternity leave (Art. 4) – The directive introduces a minimum of 10 working days of paid paternity leave, to be taken around the time of a child’s birth. This provision is symbolically and practically crucial, as it signals men’s role in early childcare and sets a precedent for shared responsibility from the beginning of a child’s life.
Parental leave (Art. 5) – The directive strengthens parental leave, granting each parent an individual right to at least four months of leave, of which two are non-transferable between parents. This measure prevents the concentration of leave solely in the hands of mothers, encouraging fathers to take their share
Carers’ leave (Art. 6) – For the first time at EU level, the directive creates a right to carers’ leave (article 6), consisting of five working days per year for workers to provide personal care or support to a relative or household member with serious health needs. Payment is not mandated at EU level but encouraged.
Flexible working arrangements (Art. 9) – Article 9 expands the possibility to request flexible working arrangements, such as telework, flexible schedules, or reduced hours, for parents of children up to the age of eight and for informal carers.

Table 1. Minimum rights under Directive (EU) 2019/1158: scope, eligibility, duration, payment., flexibility and purpose

Type of Right	Who is Eligible	Minimum Duration / Standard	Payment	Flexibility	Purpose
Paternity Leave	Fathers or equivalent second parents	At least 10 working days around the birth of a child	Paid at a level at least equivalent to sick pay	Taken at/around time of birth	To support bonding with the child and share care from the start
Parental Leave	All working parents	At least 4 months per parent, 2 months non-transferable	Payment not harmonised (up to Member State), but should be adequate to encourage uptake by both parents	Can be taken full-time, part-time, or in blocks until child is at least 8 years old	To promote equal sharing of childcare responsibilities
Carers’ Leave	Workers providing personal care or support to a relative or person in the same household	At least 5 working days per year	Not required to be paid (left to Member State)	Leave may be taken in full- or part-days, according to employer/employee agreement	To enable workers to respond to serious health needs of relatives
Flexible Working Arrangements	Parents of children up to 8 years & all carers	Right to request flexibility (e.g. remote work, reduced hours, flexible schedules)	Not directly about payment, but protects against dismissal or discrimination	Employers must consider and respond, can refuse with justification	To allow workers to reconcile care responsibilities with employment

The novelty of the Directive lies not only in the enumeration of these rights but also in its insistence on the principles of adequacy, accessibility, and non-discrimination. Workers must not suffer retaliation for using care-related leave or flexible arrangements, and Member States are encouraged to provide remuneration sufficient to make leave economically viable for both men and women. Research shows that without adequate payment, leave tends to be taken predominantly by women, thereby reproducing rather than reducing gender inequalities (Alessi et al., 2023).

From EU law to national practice

While the Directive sets minimum standards, its practical effect depends on how each Member State chooses to transpose and implement it. The deadline of August 2022 revealed the uneven pace of reform across Europe. Countries with pre-existing robust family leave policies, such as Sweden or Denmark, had little difficulty aligning their systems with EU requirements. By contrast, several Southern and Eastern European countries lagged behind, either because of fiscal constraints, lack of political consensus, or deeply embedded cultural attitudes toward care. In April 2023, the European Commission even issued reasoned opinions to a number of Member States, including Spain, Cyprus and Greece, urging them to complete or correct their transposition of the Directive (European Commission, 2023)

The experience of the partner countries considered here illustrates both progress and persisting gaps.

In Romania, the Directive was transposed through Law No. 283/2022, which established paid paternity leave of ten to fifteen days, five days of paid carers’ leave, and the right to request flexible work. While on paper this appears comprehensive, the system remains rigid: parental leave, although relatively generous in length, must often be taken as a continuous block, limiting parents’ ability to combine part-time work with care responsibilities.

In Cyprus, the Work-Life Balance Law (216(I)/2022) introduced ten fully paid days of paternity leave and provided for carers’ and parental leave. However, both parental leave and carers’ leave remain largely unpaid, which significantly reduces their accessibility in practice. Uptake remains low, reflecting both cultural norms and limited institutional capacity to monitor compliance.

Greece aligned its system through Law 4808/21, which for the first time formally acknowledged the role of informal caregivers. The law grants five days of unpaid carers’ leave, provides for parental leave rights, and allows workers to request telework or flexible schedules. Yet, most leave remains unpaid, and the burden of caregiving still falls disproportionately on women. Nevertheless, the law’s symbolic recognition of informal carers marks an important shift in Greek labour and social policy.

Reforms in Spain preceded the Directive and, in some respects, went beyond its requirements. Since 2021, fathers and second parents are entitled to sixteen weeks of fully paid paternity leave, placing Spain among the most progressive EU countries in this regard. Carers’ leave of five paid days was introduced under Royal Decree-Law 5/2023. While parental leave exists for all working parents, payment levels and practical accessibility remain uneven, which can limit uptake and equitable use. These gaps have led the European Commission to initiate infringement procedures. Alongside legal entitlements, Spain has promoted a cultural shift through initiatives such as the Co-Responsible Plan, which certifies informal care as work experience and actively encourages men’s participation in family care.

Finally, Italy transposed the Directive via Legislative Decree 105/2022, introducing ten days of fully paid paternity leave, extending parental leave until the child reaches twelve years of age (with partial payment), and formalising flexible working rights. Italy also grants carers of family members with severe disabilities three days of paid leave per month. A particularly noteworthy aspect of the Italian approach is the strengthening of anti-discrimination protections for workers who make use of family-related leave or flexible work, signalling a broader commitment to changing workplace culture.

Table 2. National application of the Work–Life Balance Directive (2019/1158): comparative overview – Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania (2021–2024)

Country	Paternity leave	Parental leave	Carer’s leave	Flexible working & protections	Notable strengths / gaps
Italy	10 working days, 100% pay; “structural” paternity leave; alternative paternity leave where the mother cannot care (Legislative Decree 105/2022).	Extended framework: parental leave payable for longer (e.g., 9 months at 30% across parents); usable until child is 12 (Family Act; Lgs. D. 105/2022).	3 paid days/month for care of relatives with severe disability (Law 104/1992 as updated; integrated by 105/2022).	Right to request telework, reduced hours, or modified shifts for parents <12 and carers; anti-discrimination safeguards strengthened; employer may assess compatibility with business needs (Lgs. D. 105/2022).	Strong pay for fathers; robust anti-discrimination. Gap: parental pay is still partial, employer discretion on flexibility (Erboli, 2022; Crespi & Palermo, 2024).
Spain	16 weeks, 100% pay since 2021 (exceeds EU minimum).	8 weeks, currently unpaid; subject to EU infringement (Royal Decree-Law 5/2023).	5 days/year, paid; force majeure leave also paid; strong protection against dismissal when exercising rights (RDL 5/2023).	Statutory right to adapt working day (negotiation window cut to 15 days), telework uptake growing but uneven by sector (RDL 5/2023)	Best-in-class paternity leave; strong dismissal protections. Gap: parental leave unpaid (Moore, 2025; INE, 2024a).
Greece	At least 10 working days, paid, aligned with the EU minimum (Law 4808/2021).	Right to parental leave (up to 4 months; mixed/partial pay depending on scheme).	5 days/year, unpaid; plus paid force majeure absences (2 single days) (Law 4808/2021).	Right to request telework/flexible hours/part-time; employer must reply within 1 month and justify refusals; protection against retaliation (Law 4808/2021).	First formal recognition of informal carers; clear procedure for requests. Gap: many supports unpaid; social care capacity uneven (Arnogiannaki & Terzakis, 2021).
Cyprus	10 working days, fully paid (Law 216(I)/2022).	18 weeks’ entitlement, mostly unpaid.	5 days/year, unpaid; force majeure leave provided (216(I)/2022).	Remote Working Law 120(I)/2023 regulates telework; broader flexible work rights exist but uptake is limited; penalties for unjust dismissal linked to WLB rights (CYLAW, 2022; 2023).	Clear legal architecture, strong paid paternity. Gaps: unpaid parental & carer’s leave; practical uptake/awareness low (Eurostat, 2025).
Romania	10 working days paid and +5 days if father completes childcare course (OUG 117/2022).	Up to 2 years paid (3 years if the child has a disability), generally taken as a continuous block.	5 days/year, paid.	Right to request flexible schedules; telework/part-time; parents of children <11 may request 4 remote-work days/month; paid force-majeure leave up to 10 days/year (Law 283/2022).	Generous parental duration and concrete telework entitlement. Gap: parental leave inflexible (continuous block) (Government of Romania, 2022a; 2022b; 2023).

A fragmented European landscape

Taken together, these examples reveal both convergence and divergence. Spain and Italy stand out for the generosity of their paternity leave policies, while Cyprus and Greece provide only the EU minimum and rarely ensure adequate payment. Romania’s system offers security but less flexibility, while Spain’s main shortcoming remains the lack of paid parental leave. Across all countries, cultural and institutional barriers remain as significant as legal ones. Rights that exist on paper may remain underused if employers resist them, if workers fear retaliation, or if social norms continue to stigmatise men who take time off for care.

In this sense, the Directive represents an important milestone, but also a reminder that legislation is only the first step. The recognition of carers and parents as legitimate rights-holders in the workplace challenges long-standing hierarchies between productive and reproductive work. Its effectiveness will depend on sustained political commitment, cultural change, and adequate financial support to ensure that these rights are not merely theoretical but genuinely transformative for European families.

Unit 2.1: Work-Life Balance Directive and National Transposition

The implementation of the EU Work–Life Balance Directive (2019/1158) has been a critical step in promoting gender equality and supporting workers in reconciling professional and caregiving responsibilities. Yet, the actual adherence to its provisions across Member States shows important gaps and inconsistencies. These challenges emerge at 2 levels: (a) the national transposition and enforcement of the Directive and (b) the practical application in workplaces.

National Transposition and Enforcement

Uneven Transposition and Delayed Compliance

Although the deadline for transposing the Directive into national law was set for August 2022, by September of the same year, the European Commission had to issue formal notices to 19 Member States for incomplete transposition, and by April 2023 reasoned opinions were sent to 11 countries, including Greece, Cyprus, and Spain (European Commission, 2023).

In countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, pre-existing family-friendly policies facilitated a relatively smooth implementation. By contrast, in Southern and Eastern Europe, financial constraints, weaker welfare systems, and cultural resistance delayed harmonisation. For instance, Italy and Spain struggled particularly with the remuneration of parental leave and rights to flexible work arrangements, while Romania requires parental leave to be taken in a single block rather than flexibly, which reduces its effectiveness.

Challenges in Measuring Implementation and Impact

One of the main obstacles is the scarcity of reliable data on implementation. While leaves and flexible arrangements are now formally available in most Member States, it remains difficult to assess how widely they are used, especially by informal carers and women. Eurostat and national labour surveys provide only partial figures, and systematic monitoring mechanisms remain weak (European Commission, 2023).

Evidence suggests that compliance is higher for carers’ leave and flexible working arrangements than for paternity or parental leave (Zumbyte & Szelewa, 2024). However, the actual impact on gender equality in caregiving and the labour market participation of women remains largely undocumented.

Practical Application in Workplaces

Obstacles in Workplace Application

Even where legal frameworks exist, several barriers hinder real uptake:

Lack of awareness: Co-creation workshops conducted under the CareDivide project revealed that many employees, and even HR specialists, were unaware of their entitlements to carer’s leave and flexible arrangements.
Cultural norms and gender stereotypes: In many contexts, caregiving is still seen as a woman’s responsibility. Men are less likely to request leave due to social expectations that caregiving is ‘women’s work’, while women may face subtle penalties for doing so (Lyon, 2006; Papastavrou et al., 2009; Zygouri et al., 2024).
Employer resistance: Especially in Small- to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), formal HR processes are weak, and flexible arrangements often depend on the goodwill of managers rather than formalised policies. Some employers fear productivity loss or administrative burden (Alessi et al., 2023).
Limited financial support: Research shows that uptake of carers’ and parental leave depends heavily on whether such leave is well compensated. Where remuneration is low or absent, employees, mostly women, often resort to informal solutions (De Stefanis, 2023).
Weak monitoring and enforcement: Labour inspectorates and equality bodies exist in most countries but face resource limitations. Compliance in the informal economy and smaller enterprises remains particularly low (Eurofound, 2024a).

Disconnect Between Policy and Practice

The challenges outlined above highlight a gap between legislative ambition and daily reality. While the Directive has succeeded in establishing minimum EU-wide standards, the provisions often remain insufficient for those providing long-term or intensive daily care, such as for older relatives or family members with disabilities. Many caregivers report that the limited number of days available do not correspond to their real needs, leaving them to rely on personal arrangements, flexible managers, or the private care market (Care Divide – Mapping the Gap Report; 2025).

This disconnect also underlines the gendered impact: despite formal progress, women continue to bear the disproportionate burden of unpaid care, with long-term consequences for their employment and career trajectories.

Potential Shortcomings of the Work-Life Balance Directive

The Work-Life Balance Directive represents a significant step towards supporting caregivers and promoting gender equality in the distribution of unpaid care responsibilities across the European Union. However, despite its general positive impact, the Directive presents several notable shortcomings that limit its effectiveness.

First, it does not extend protections to domestic workers or atypical workers, including those on precarious contracts or self-employed, who frequently carry substantial caregiving responsibilities. These groups remain particularly vulnerable, with limited access to formalised leave, flexible working arrangements, and social protections, leaving a significant segment of caregivers outside the scope of the Directive (Eurofund, 2025).

Moreover, the Directive applies a narrow scope of eligibility. While it established entitlements for parents through paternity and parental leave, carer’s leave is limited to workers providing personal care to a relative or household member with a serious medical condition. This excludes many real-life caregiving arrangements, such as eldest daughters, siblings, or other family members who assume daily childcare responsibilities when parents are unable and unavailable to provide care – a common scenario in parentified families. In addition, carers in partnerships not legally recognised in certain Member States, as well as friends, neighbours, or informal support networks increasingly involved in unpaid care, also fall outside its coverage. These omissions are particularly relevant in societies where caregiving networks extend beyond the nuclear family or in cases where traditional family structures are not the norm. Informal or de facto carers, such as those providing care without legal guardianship, remain unrecognised, despite often performing essential caregiving tasks, and are left without support mechanisms or social protection (Eurofund, 2025).

The Directive also lacks provisions addressing cross-border caregiving, where care is provided in a Member State different from the caregiver’s country of residence or employment. Frontier workers face legal and administrative barriers due to fragmented national regulations and limited coordination of social security systems, constraining their access to carers’ leave and associated benefits (European Commission, 2017).

Groups facing compounded care responsibilities, such as the “sandwich generation” caring simultaneously for children and elderly relatives, are similarly underserved. These caregivers experience heightened stress and time constraints, and available leave provisions often fail to accommodate dual caregiving responsibilities.

Geographical disparities further exacerbate these challenges. Workers in rural or peripheral areas encounter limited formal care services, fewer flexible working opportunities, and a heavier reliance on informal caregiving networks. They may also face higher financial burdens due to travel, logistics, or necessary adaptations for the care recipient (Eurofound, 2025). These disparities highlight the uneven practical implementation of work–life balance policies across the EU.

Single parents represent another group insufficiently covered in some Member States. Traditionally, they may have access only to maternity or paternity leave, without the ability to combine entitlements. Spain provides a positive example, allowing single mothers to accumulate maternity and paternity leave, thereby broadening their support and illustrating the potential benefits of more harmonised policies across the EU.

Finally, deeply ingrained cultural and economic norms continue to hinder genuine progress toward gender-equitable caregiving. Traditional gender expectations discourage men from taking parental or carers’ leave, placing the bulk of unpaid care on women. Data from the European Social Survey European Research Infrastructure (ESS ERIC, 2025 – ESS11) indicate persistent disparities in support for mandatory equal parental leave: in Portugal, 81% of women support it compared to 70% of men; in Cyprus, the gender gap is negligible (0.5%), while in Austria, support is low among both women (32.6%) and men (26.7%). These figures underscore that legal entitlements alone are insufficient to shift social norms or achieve equal uptake of caregiving responsibilities.

Graph 1 –Percentage of women and men who agree that parental leave should be equally mandatory for both parents (ESS11, 2025)

Beyond these gaps, as we have discussed in the section “Work–Life Balance Directive and National Application” and “Challenges and obstacles in adherence to relevant provisions”, variations in national implementation further constrain the Directive’s impact. Differences in national legal frameworks, monitoring mechanisms, and compensation levels affect caregivers’ real access to leave and flexible working arrangements. In countries with limited financial compensation, women in particular may continue to rely on informal care arrangements, undermining the Directive’s objective of equitable workforce participation and support for carers.

In conclusion, while the Work-Life Balance Directive has contributed to advancing care support and promoting gender equality in the EU, its limited coverage, uneven national implementation, and persistence of cultural and geographic barriers suggest that further policy innovation is required.

Expanding the Directive to include informal and atypical workers, carers in partnerships not legally recognised, cross-border caregivers, and those in rural areas, as well as ensuring equitable leave for single parents, are essential steps toward a more inclusive approach. Furthermore, highlighting these shortcomings makes it clear that addressing unpaid care effectively requires not only legislation but also cultural transformation, financial incentives, and formal recognition of informal caregiving networks, including parentified children and sibling carers, who remain largely invisible in policy frameworks. Such measures would help ensure that all caregivers, regardless of employment status, family structure, or geographic location, can balance work and care responsibilities more effectively, ultimately promoting sustainable and equitable caregiving across the EU.