For most European workers, collective agreements are the main way in which working time is set. Through its analysis of working time developments over the past decade in the EU15, Eurofound has discovered that in these countries the working week has grown somewhat shorter: average agreed weekly working hours have fallen from 38.6 hours to 37.9 hours – a fall of 1.8%. While the working week has also reduced in the 10 Member States that joined in 2004 (the NMS10), the reduction has been less: since 2003, average agreed weekly working hours declined by only 0.2 hours or 0.5%, down from 39.6 hours to 39.4. These collectively agreed reductions in working hours did not entail a loss of pay; however, towards the end of 2008, cuts in working hours with consequent cuts in pay became increasingly topical as the economic crisis deepened. Enforced reductions in working time – and usually pay – in the form of short-time work and temporary layoffs have been on the increase in many EU countries as companies seek to cope with falling demand.
Across the European Union, the longest working weeks (see note 1), worked by full-time employees in their main jobs, are found in Romania (41.8 hours), the Czech Republic (41.7 hours) and Latvia (41.7 hours). The shortest are in France (38.4 hours), Belgium (38.6 hours) and Ireland (38.9 hours). Only three of the EU15 countries have working weeks longer than the average for the entire EU27; by contrast, workers in 10 of the 12 new Member States work longer weeks than the EU27 average.
The report also compares the average collectively agreed entitlements for paid annual leave in the EU. It finds that the average number of fully paid holidays in Europe is 25.2 days per year. The average in the EU15 and Norway stands at 26.5 days, with a substantial difference between the average in Sweden (33 days) and in Greece (23 days). Among the new EU Member States, the average is 21.4 days per year, with notable, though smaller, differences between the Czech Republic (25 days) and Estonia (20 days).
