EU opens second-phase consultation on a Quality Jobs Act covering telework, the right to disconnect and algorithmic management
The European Commission opened the second-phase consultation of EU social partners on a future Quality Jobs Act on 20 July 2026. The consultation runs until 28 September 2026 and covers, among other areas, the health and safety risks of telework, psychosocial hazards, algorithmic management and workplace surveillance, and workers’ rights in subcontracting chains. It follows a first-stage consultation held in December 2025 and January 2026, which drew responses from 34 EU-level social partner organisations.
On telework and AI, the consultation asks whether EU-level rules should update health-and-safety law for off-premises workplaces, make automated management decisions more transparent and human-centred, and protect workers from excessive monitoring. After this stage, unions and employers may choose to negotiate a joint agreement, or the Commission may bring forward its own legislative proposal.
Why this matters
This is the early stage of what could become EU-wide law on the everyday conditions of remote work: the right to switch off, limits on how far employers can monitor home-based staff, and rules on management decisions made by algorithms. Nothing is binding yet, and any directive would take years to agree and transpose. But the direction of travel is set here, and the areas on the table map directly onto the friction points remote workers already report, from always-on contact to opaque productivity tracking.
Context
Right-to-disconnect and telework protections currently vary widely across the EU, from statutory schemes in France, Luxembourg, Spain and others to no specific rule at all in several member states. A Quality Jobs Act would be the first attempt to set a common floor across the bloc. It sits alongside the EU AI Act, whose high-risk obligations for workplace and HR AI systems have been pushed to December 2027, as the two main EU instruments shaping how AI and remote work are regulated at work.
What to watch
The consultation closes on 28 September 2026. Whether it leads to a negotiated social-partner agreement or a Commission legislative proposal will become clearer after that date; a formal proposal is expected before the end of 2026.