A report shows the widening of the gap between agreed and actual working hours in the EU
The European Agency Eurofound published a study which shows that the actual working week for full time workers stood at 39.7 hours across the 27 EU Member States in 2011. This means an average of 1.6 hours more than the agreed working hours. In addition, the latest annual update of working time developments also shows that men continue to work longer hours than women on paid work, on average 2.1 hours more per week.
Eurofound, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, has published its latest annual update of working time developments which shows that the actual working week for full time workers stood at 39.7 hours across the 27 EU Member States in 2011. This figure remains the same than in 2010. In 2011, average collective agreed weekly working time in the European Union stood at 38.1 hours. The only reported changes in comparison to 2010 took place in Slovakia and Spain. France remains the country with the shortest average collectively agreed working week at 35.6 hours. The Nordic countries, together with the UK and the Netherlands, continued to register an average agreed normal working week below the EU15 average of 37.6 hours in 2011.
Across the 27 EU Member States, full-time employees in Romania worked the longest actual weekly hours in their main jobs in 2011 – 41.3 hours, the same as in 2010. They were followed by employees in Luxembourg (40.7), Germany (40.6), Estonia and the UK (both 40.5), Austria and Bulgaria (both 40.3), and the Czech Republic and Poland (both 40.2). Employees in Finland worked the shortest hours (37.8).
With regard to the holidays, the combined total of agreed annual leave and public holidays varied in the EU from 40 days in Germany to 27 days in Hungary and Romania. Other notably high-leave countries in 2011 included Italy and Denmark (with 39 leave days in total), while other notably low-leave countries included Estonia with 28 days, Poland with 29 days, and Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia with 30 days. The average figure for the EU was 34.2 days.