Developments and insights – European Commission

The 2024 Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness identified creating high-quality jobs and addressing skills shortages as key enabling actions to improve the EU innovation model. The European Commission sees quality jobs as an enabler of EU competitiveness and sustainable growth, while also supporting a resilient social Europe. This is reflected in its communications on the Competitiveness Compass, the Union of Skills and the Clean Industrial Deal.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in her political guidelines 2024-2029, announced the (non-legislative) quality jobs roadmap to ensure competitiveness and prosperity in the EU. The March 2025 Pact for European social dialogue translated this announcement into a commitment to deliver on quality jobs, and the Commission then held exchanges with social partners and a two-stage consultation on the right to disconnect and telework. While the roadmap was still being finalised, President von der Leyen, in her State of the Union Speech 2025, called it a preparatory step to a (legislative) quality jobs act, envisaged in the Commission work programme for the last quarter of 2026. Once the quality jobs roadmap was published, the Commission started consulting European social partners on possible further EU action to be included in the quality jobs act. In the Commission, this initiative is dealt with by the DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. In Parliament, it falls mainly within the remit of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL).

Why is the initiative important?

In the current geopolitical and economic context, with global competition and trade dependencies, and the ongoing green, digital and demographic transformations, companies struggle to remain competitive. The Draghi report affirmed that higher productivity goes hand in hand with improved job quality and increased labour market participation. In parallel, over recent years, citizens' economic concerns have increased, in particular as regards the cost of living. For instance, in the European Parliament Spring 2026 Eurobarometer, the 'financial situation and ability to afford daily life' scored second highest, mentioned by 49 % of respondents as most important for good quality of life, while 'job security and working conditions' was in seventh position, mentioned by 38 % of respondents.

What makes a quality job?

Over the years, the concept of job quality has evolved. While earlier approaches emphasised dimensions such as wages, type of employment contract, social protection coverage, working time, and health and safety, the concept has been enriched with aspects such as work autonomy, work intensity, skills use and exposure to psychosocial risks.

For instance, Eurofound¹ sees job quality as a composition of the characteristics of work and employment that have an impact, positive or negative, on workers' health and well-being. They use seven job quality dimensions (each measured by an index): physical environment (absence of physical hazards that pose a risk to health and well-being); social environment; working time quality; work intensity; skills and discretion; prospects; and earnings. These indicators capture demands on workers as well as resources that are at their disposal. Job quality is clearly multidimensional, as it is not just one aspect that makes a job a good job.

The Employment Committee (EMCO),² in its June 2025 opinion, updated the previous 2017 framework on the dimensions of job quality. It now defines 13 policy dimensions covering areas such as earnings, working conditions, including stress and psychosocial risks, job security, work-life balance, access to training, social protection, collective bargaining coverage, and equal opportunities.

The December 2024 Council Employment Guidelines already stress that Member States should facilitate and support investment in the creation of quality jobs. The Commission monitors various aspects of job quality via the European Semester.

Recent developments

The European Commission, in its December 2025 quality jobs roadmap communication, described the areas where it believes that EU action can make the greatest difference:

The Commission's 2025 two-stage consultation of European social partners outlined the following areas for possible further EU action.

Member State positions and interested parties' opinions

Individually, Member States have distinct approaches to employment matters, such as labour inspections, workers' representation and collective bargaining, which resurface in discussions on the Commission's proposals. Recently, this was the case during negotiations on the directive on adequate minimum wages and in the aftermath of its adoption.

Acting collectively, the April 2024 European Council meeting called for an 'integrated approach across all policy areas to increase productivity and sustainable and inclusive growth', which should include fostering high-quality jobs through social dialogue. In November 2024, EU leaders welcomed the Draghi report identifying high-quality jobs and addressing skills shortages as key enablers to improve the EU innovation model. The December 2024 Employment Guidelines stressed that Member States should facilitate and support investment in the creation of quality jobs.

The Irish Presidency of the Council states, among its priorities, that it will lead the discussion on how we create and support high quality jobs within modern labour markets.

Among the interested parties, BusinessEurope, representing EU employers, point in their policy orientation note to the difficulty of assessing job quality and comparing the existing frameworks to measure job quality. In their view, the EU should focus on putting in place the conditions for creating jobs that are productive and result in competitive enterprises, while also supporting workers' employability. They caution against measures that could undermine social dialogue or harm EU competitiveness through excessive regulation. In their contribution to the Commission consultation, BusinessEurope is sceptical about the attempts to create a monitoring framework to measure progress in job quality. Employers see the key challenges as being the need to address the consequences of an ageing and shrinking workforce, the high number of inactive people across Europe and structural mismatches between skills supply and demand, leading to recruitment difficulties. In their view, job quality in Europe is generally good and much higher than in other regions of the world, and the Commission should not create a negative narrative around certain types of jobs or introduce criteria that strictly categorise jobs and or introduce criteria that strictly categorise jobs and thereby introduce a job 'hierarchy'.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), in their Blueprint to deliver quality jobs, list the following elements to improve job quality: regulating AI in the workplace; tackling abuses in subcontracting and labour intermediation; a just transition; preventing psychosocial risks; telework and the right to disconnect; and making all jobs secure.

In their response to the Commission's consultation, ETUC calls for legislative action to:

European Parliament views

In its January 2026 legislative-initiative resolution, Parliament called for a just transition directive in the world of work, with a set of concrete measures that tangibly improve the working conditions, health and safety, democracy at work, collective bargaining coverage and training and skills of workers and the self-employed, and which ensure the effective enforcement of EU employment and social policy legislation. The directive should, among other things, establish an individual right to training for workers during working hours, establish national just transition strategies with a long-term vision for local economies and workers, and develop support programmes for businesses, in particular SMEs and local actors in order to encourage local job-creation.

In its December 2025 legislative-initiative resolution, Parliament called for a directive framing digitalisation, artificial intelligence and algorithmic management in the workplace. The directive should ensure transparency, human oversight, data protection, and workers' information and consultation, as well as safeguarding workers' autonomy, mental health, and work-life balance.

In its January 2021 legislative-initiative resolution, Parliament called for a directive establishing the right to disconnect that would apply to all workers and all sectors, both public and private, and which would be effectively enforced. The purpose of the right to disconnect is to ensure the protection of workers' health and safety, and of fair working conditions, including work-life balance. Currently, Parliament's EMPL committee is preparing another legislative-initiative resolution, on psychosocial risks, stress and mental health at work (rapporteur: Estelle Ceulemans, S&D, Belgium).