Social legislation absent from Commission’s work programme

The 2025 work programme of the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, fails to include new social legislation — legislation that brings about social reform — says the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). The ETUC points out that this is the first time this failure has occurred since 2019.

And it says that while there are seven pieces of “simplification” legislation planned over the next year — a process that sometimes removes protections — working people will find no legislation “to protect their jobs, improve their working conditions or raise their pay”.

The ETUC is looking for new directives on the right to disconnect, stress at work and the use of AI at the workplace, as well as action to give priority in public procurement to companies with collective agreements, and mechanisms to reduce the length of sub-contracting chains.

On AI, it points to a recent European Commission poll which found that 74% thought it was important or very important to have rules that prohibited fully automatic decision-making. And 77% felt the same about involving workers and their representatives in the design and adoption of new technologies.

ETUC general secretary Esther Lynch said that “contrary to what corporate lobbyists have been claiming, the public still very much want the EU to bring forward legislation that addresses the problems they are facing”.