Eurofound publishes State of play of convergence 2026 – Job quality data feeding the EU Quality Jobs Act
Eurofound has published its 2026 policy brief on job quality across EU member states, analysing whether workplace standards are improving and the degree to which they are converging or diverging. The brief covers key indicators across fairness, health and safety, work-life balance, skills for the digital transition, and the role of social dialogue and collective bargaining. The research feeds directly into the European Commission’s preparation of the EU Quality Jobs Act, foreseen for 2026 under the Commission Work Programme.
The Quality Jobs Act sits alongside the Quality Jobs Roadmap (published 4 December 2025) as the operational follow-on to the European Pillar of Social Rights action plan. The Roadmap focuses on creating quality jobs, fairness and modernisation, green / digital / demographic transitions, social dialogue, and effective access to rights. The Commission ran a first-stage consultation on the Quality Jobs Act covering algorithmic management and AI at work, occupational safety and health, subcontracting, and enforcement; feedback closed on 29 January 2026.
Why this matters
For remote workers and freelancers across the EU, the Quality Jobs Act is the legislative vehicle that may pick up several long-pending threads at once. The first-stage consultation explicitly references algorithmic management and AI at work as priority areas – the same scope that the EU Platform Work Directive (entering force 2 December 2026) addresses for platform workers, but applied to the broader labour market. Subcontracting is also in scope, which matters for the freelance-and-EOR layer that underpins much cross-border remote work.
Eurofound’s job-quality indicators – pay, prospects, intrinsic job quality, working time quality, work intensity, skills and discretion, and social environment – are the metrics against which the eventual Quality Jobs Act will be calibrated. Remote workers consistently score better on intrinsic quality and skills/discretion in Eurofound surveys, but worse on working time quality and work intensity, especially around long hours and insufficient rest.
Context
The 2026 Spring Semester Package, published by the Commission on 3 June, includes updated employment guidelines that explicitly reference the Quality Jobs Roadmap and the upcoming Quality Jobs Act. Country-specific recommendations have been issued to all 27 member states, with deeper Social Convergence Framework analysis for nine countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Romania, and Finland. The Joint Employment Report 2026 confirms the EU is on track for its 78% employment-rate target by 2030, with 75.8% reached in 2026.
The Commission’s Spring Package framing centres on quality jobs, fair labour markets, and skills development – with the Anti-Poverty Strategy (May 2026) and the European Affordable Housing Plan as connected initiatives. The ETUC has called for the Roadmap to upgrade the European Pillar of Social Rights and produce a solid just-transitions framework with new rights for digitalised workplaces.
What to watch
The Commission’s first formal Quality Jobs Act proposal is expected later in 2026, drawing on the first-stage consultation findings and Eurofound’s evidence base. The European Parliament’s TA-10-2026-0076 resolution on employment and social priorities for 2026 calls for coherence between the European Semester, the EPSR action plan, and the upcoming Quality Jobs Act and Anti-Poverty Strategy.