Overview
Two governments put money behind remote work this week, and they did it in opposite directions.
Greece announced a subsidy covering 90% of salary and social security contributions for twelve months for businesses that hire people living in mountainous, remote or island areas and employ them remotely. It is the first Greek subsidised-employment programme built around telework rather than around a physical workplace, and it treats remote work as a decentralisation tool. Terms and a start date have not been published.
Spain’s Extremadura went the other way and paid employers to convert posts that already exist. €2,500 per worker moved onto a telework agreement, with applications closing on 15 November. Between them the two schemes are a useful pair: one subsidises hiring someone where they already live, the other subsidises letting someone stay where they are.
Against that, the week’s employer news ran the other way. Half of large Irish employers are expected to mandate fixed office days by 2027, Barclays staff are contesting a move to three days, and a ten-country survey found most UK workers believe return-to-office policy is about visibility rather than output.
EU-Level Policy & Regulation
The Council moved to final approval of the social security coordination overhaul, closing nearly a decade of negotiation on Regulation 883/2004. Member-state representatives met on 23 September to confirm the compromise the European Parliament adopted on 7 July.
Three changes matter for people working across borders. Jobseekers will keep home-country unemployment benefit for six months rather than three. Posted workers will need three months’ prior affiliation to the sending state. And prior notification plus an A1 certificate become mandatory, with an exemption for business trips and work of up to three consecutive days in any thirty. Most of it applies only twenty-four months after entry into force. (European Times, K&L Gates analysis)
Belgium will require every employer to record daily and weekly working time from 1 January 2027, with a real compliance deadline of 1 April. The draft federal law follows Court of Justice rulings from 2019 and 2024 rather than the Working Time Directive text. Exemptions are expected for managers and mobile workers, and the open question for anyone working from home is how those hours get logged at all. An Acerta survey found 70% of Belgian companies already record hours and 42.8% oppose the mandate. (The Brussels Times)
Country Updates
Spain
Extremadura opened €1.8m in telework and flexible-hours grants, published in the regional gazette on 25 September. Autónomos with employees and SMEs of up to 250 staff with a workplace in the region can claim €2,500 for each worker moved onto a telework agreement covering at least 30% of the working week and lasting at least a year, plus €2,500 for each flexible-hours measure. Each line is capped at €10,000 per company, rising by €1,000 where female employment equals or exceeds male, giving a €22,000 ceiling.
Agreements must be signed between 1 January and 15 November 2026, and applications close on 15 November. (Diario Oficial de Extremadura)
This is a regional government paying employers to convert posts that already exist into remote ones, in one of Spain’s least densely populated regions. Most European schemes in this space pay the worker to move. This one pays the employer to let them stay.
Separately, ATA reported that 68% of Spain’s self-employed take home less than the minimum wage, with an average working week of 48 to 72 hours and roughly four hours a week spent on administration alone. (La Razón)
Greece
The Labour Ministry announced a programme covering 90% of salary and social security contributions for twelve months where a business hires someone living in a mountainous, remote or island area and employs them remotely. Minister Niki Kerameos set it out on 22 September and the Prime Minister restated it on 27 September.
It is the first Greek subsidised-employment scheme designed around telework, and the framing is explicitly about decentralisation rather than employment support. Terms, budget and a start date have not been published; DYPA is reported to be planning a pilot of around 1,000 places, possibly from October. (Ta Nea)
This sits alongside the €10,000 relocation grant we covered last week, and the two work differently. The relocation grant pays a household to move. This one pays an employer to hire someone who is already there.
Ireland
Around 34% of Irish employers with more than fifty staff already require a fixed number of office days, and that is projected to reach 50% during 2027. Ipsos B&A surveyed 404 businesses for law firm William Fry. Three days is the most common arrangement at 33%, two days at 29%. Productivity was the leading driver at 37%, with recruitment and retention second at 22%, rising to 40% among large employers.
Only 5% of larger employers expect a full return to the office within twelve months. Hybrid runs at 62% among larger employers against under 30% of SMEs. (The Irish Times, RTÉ)
A counterweight arrived in the same week and the same country. Property economist John McCartney argued that weak demand for Dublin office space is structural rather than cyclical, because office-based employment is contracting while remote working continues to expand. Commercial agents’ second-quarter vacancy estimates for Dublin range from 12.2% to 15.4%. (The Irish Times)
County Leitrim set a target of 1,300 additional remote workers over ten years, under a strategy built on the completed €46m National Broadband Plan rollout. Leitrim currently has 28% of its workforce working remotely against a national average of 36%. (RTÉ)
Sweden
From 1 October the maintenance requirement for accompanying family members is examined at extension as well as at first application. Family members’ own income can count towards it, but subsidised employment and unemployment benefit cannot.
Comprehensive health insurance is now required for family members of ICT permit and EU Blue Card holders staying up to a year, and a maintenance requirement is introduced for families of researchers and former researchers. (Migrationsverket)
This is a separate instrument from the long-term-resident family rules taking effect the same day, which we covered last week.
Estonia
E-residents founded more than 4,200 companies in 2026 to date, up 36% on last year and 47% on 2024, at roughly 600 a month. Nine thousand people became e-residents this year, and 34% of those who joined in the first two months had registered a company by September. The programme reported €57.6m in direct state revenue over the first seven months. (Biometric Update)
Set against that, an opinion column on Estonian public broadcasting argued that many e-resident companies may carry tax exposure in the country where their owner actually lives. Linell Raud, an attorney at NJORD, contends that where a company’s board and its real activity sit outside Estonia, the host country can treat the company as having a permanent establishment there and tax its profits retroactively.
This is a law firm partner’s opinion piece rather than guidance from the Estonian Tax and Customs Board, and it should be read as one lawyer’s argument. It is worth reading anyway if you run an Estonian company from somewhere else, because permanent establishment is a question your country of residence decides, not Estonia. (ERR News)
Corporate Watch
Barclays staff are contesting a move to three office days. From October, around half of the bank’s 45,000 UK staff go from two days to three, with managing directors and senior leaders on four. Thousands have signed a Unite open letter arguing the bank “is not able to provide an evidence-based rationale” for the change.
Unite is asking for exemptions where a commute exceeds 40 minutes or 35 miles each way, a one-day maximum for long-term carers, flexible start and finish times for those with childcare, and a one-off payment before March 2027. (Banking Dive)
In Serbia, the share of IT job adverts offering fully remote work fell from a 40% peak in 2024–25 to 26% in the first eight months of 2026, back to its 2021 level. Hybrid rose to 32% and office-only to 42%, now the most common model. Applications per advert rose to 64 on average, with office roles drawing the most at 76. (Vreme)
AI Search & GEO Developments
Google has begun paying selected publishers when their content shapes an AI answer. Publishers who accept the terms see an “AI contribution” panel in Search Console showing a monthly earnings figure. Payment applies where content contributed significantly during generation of a Gemini, AI Overviews or AI Mode answer; being linked or used to fact-check after the answer exists does not qualify. The calculation is not disclosed, and early payouts have been described as small next to advertising revenue.
The pilot is invitation-only, and Digiday reports it has appealed more to small and mid-sized publishers than to large ones. (Digiday)
Two datasets arrived the same week showing why this matters. Publishers’ unredacted court filing in the New York consolidated AI litigation exposed Microsoft’s own internal measurement: Copilot cut click-through to publisher sites by 87% to 93% compared with Bing web search on the same domains. These are the plaintiffs’ assertions from internal documents rather than findings of the court. (PPC Land)
And Chartbeat reported that Google Search referrals across its network fell 40.2% year on year to July 2026, against 21.9% the year before, with search dropping from around 9% to 5% of pageviews over two years. Chartbeat’s own reading is that AI referrals are themselves declining across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini. This is one network’s data and the methodology has been questioned, so treat it as a signal rather than a measurement of the web. (Search Engine Journal)
One practical note for anyone checking their own visibility in AI answers: Comscore found ChatGPT’s share of prompt volume fell from 70% to 50% between January and June 2026, while Gemini nearly doubled to around 30% and Claude went from 2% to 11%. Checking one assistant is no longer checking the market. (Digiday)
Research & Data
The tenth annual Owl Labs State of Hybrid Work survey covered 8,025 full-time office workers across the UK, US, Germany and France. Thirty-one per cent said their employer changed its remote or hybrid policy in the past year, up from 24% in 2025. Seventy-three per cent of UK workers believe return-to-office policy is about leadership visibility rather than output. Fifty-nine per cent reported employer monitoring tools in use, and 82% want disclosure of monitoring made a legal requirement. (City AM)
An official evaluation of remote working in Brussels’ public administration, carried out by the Brussels Institute for Statistics and Analysis with the Federal Planning Bureau, found that mentioning remote work in a job advert brings an average of seven additional applicants for permanent civil service posts, and that staff able to work remotely are around 40% less likely to leave. The evaluation also flags reduced informal exchange and weaker team cohesion, and recommends standardising policy across Brussels administrations. (The Brussels Times)
What to watch next week
- 1 October – Sweden’s extended maintenance requirement applies to permit extensions.
- 5 October – Spain’s Royal Decree 723/2026 takes effect, including the duty to name the work centre a remote employee is assigned to.
- 30 October – the Interreg Atlantic Area fourth call for projects closes at 13:00 Lisbon time.
- Expected in October – Greek ministerial decisions on both the relocation grant platform and the new remote-hire wage subsidy.
Last week’s edition is here.