Developments and insights – European Commission

Mental health at work has become one of the largest health concerns facing the Union. In 2025, 29 % of EU workers reported stress, depression or anxiety caused or made worse by their job. The harm does not stop with individuals, but impacts the wider economy through absenteeism, productivity losses and rising costs for social protection. The Commission estimates that work-related stress contributes to around half of all working days lost in the EU.

Psychosocial risks are not a matter of personal resilience. They are well identified and arise from the organisation and management of work and poor working conditions: excessive workload, weak autonomy, job insecurity, unclear management, harassment and discrimination. What has changed in recent years is less their nature than their reach.

Digitalisation is the main driver of change, and the pandemic was the moment it accelerated. Work became faster and harder to leave behind, and a new 'always-on' culture took hold. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) set the pace of work, stretch availability beyond working hours, reduce human contact and widen the scope for control. The most visible expression of that shift was remote work, which brought greater flexibility and better work-life balance, but also longer hours, higher work pressure, difficulty disconnecting and isolation from colleagues, all recognised threats to mental health. According to Eurofound, the number of EU employees working remotely doubled between 2019 and 2021, reaching 41.7 million. Since then, use of telework has not receded and rapidly became a new working reality that left uncertainty over the applicable rules. In 2024, 30 % of respondents to Eurofound's e-survey reported always or frequently worrying about work outside working hours. A year later, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) found that 48 % of workers reported digital tools setting the speed or pace of their work, 30 % that they left them working in isolation and 28 % that they had increased their workload.

The new digital era is not the only pressure, as climate change is also reshaping working conditions. EU-OSHA points out that around a third of EU workers report exposure to at least one climate-related risk factor, and heat can raise stress levels as well as the risk of injury through fatigue.

The green and digital transitions have moved mental health at work up the EU agenda. The Union has limited competence in health policy, where its role is to support Member States' action. However, occupational safety and health is different: under Article 153 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the EU may adopt directives to improve the working environment and protect workers' health and safety, setting minimum requirements which Member States must transpose but may exceed. The directives adopted on that basis, however, were written for a different reality, and the Commission has stressed the importance of keeping pace with the changing world of work.

European Union occupational safety and health law is traditionally built around a single instrument: the 1989 Framework Directive 89/391/EEC. Its scope is broad, setting out employers' obligations to ensure workers' safety and health in every aspect of work. Psychosocial risks are covered by that scope, but they are not explicitly mentioned, which leaves their inclusion open to interpretation.

A handful of individual directives complete the picture, addressing particular aspects of workplace safety and health, some of them linked to mental health. Directive 90/270/EEC on display screen equipment requires workstations to be assessed for problems of mental stress, and remains the closest binding instrument related to the subject today. The Working Time Directive refers to work involving heavy mental strain, and Directive 92/85/EEC on pregnant workers mentions mental fatigue. Moreover, directives on transparent and predictable working conditions and on work-life balance address adjacent ground, the predictability of working hours and the reconciliation of work and family life.

Two recent legislative instruments go further. The AI Act, adopted in 2024, promotes trustworthy and human-centric artificial intelligence while safeguarding health and safety, and classifies systems used for recruitment and automated management as high-risk. The same year, the Platform Work Directive, which covers people working for digital platforms but not all workers, was adopted. It requires digital labour platforms to assess the risks automated systems pose to workers' health, expressly including psychosocial risks. Platforms may not use those systems in ways that put undue pressure on workers or harm their mental health.

Beyond legislation, three social partner framework agreements refer to the prevention of psychosocial risks: work-related stress (2004), harassment and violence at work (2007) and digitalisation (2020). None of them legally binds employers, and their impact across the Member States has been uneven. A fourth agreement on telework exists, dating from 2002. The social partners tried to revise this in 2022-2023, adding a right to disconnect, but the negotiation failed.

The political commitment came with the non-binding European Pillar of Social Rights in 2017. Work-related stress and mental wellbeing are covered in Principle 9 on work-life balance and Principle 10 on a healthy, safe and well-adapted work environment. The 2021 action plan for its implementation identified psychosocial and organisational risk factors as a source of work-related stress, poor mental health and ergonomic risks in the workplace. It also announced the EU strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021-2027, which made psychosocial risks a priority.

With its 2023 communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health, the Commission placed psychosocial risks and work-related stress among the foremost occupational safety and health challenges. In her 2025 State of the Union speech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a quality jobs act, to ensure that employment keeps pace with the modern economy. The same year, the Commission published a quality jobs roadmap communication outlining what the act could contain, including on psychosocial risks. It committed to report on the implementation of the OSH Framework Directive, and to review two directives in consultation with the social partners: the Display Screen Equipment Directive and Directive 89/654/EEC on the workplace, which regulates physical conditions at the premises where work is done. The aim is to cover telework and to better address psychosocial risks. The Commission work programme scheduled the legislative initiative for the end of 2026.

Why is an initiative important?

Psychosocial risks are not a minor category of occupational hazard. Exposure to them is linked to work-related stress and burnout, anxiety disorders, depression, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders and long-term incapacity for work. According to the 2025 OSH Pulse survey, 65 % of EU workers say their job caused or worsened a health problem in the past twelve months.

The economic weight is no less substantial. An OECD study put the annual cost of mental ill health to EU economies at more than 4 % of GDP, over €600 billion, in 2015: some €190 billion in health care, €170 billion in social security, and €240 billion in lower employment and productivity. National protection systems carry a visible share of the burden: a Eurofound report notes that in the Netherlands, poor mental health has become the most common cause of long-term sick leave, rising from 26 % of cases in 2013 to 40 % in 2023; in Austria, 45 % of the disability pensions granted in 2023 were due to mental and behavioural disorders.

While EU law is not silent, it is uneven and must stay aligned with new realities, according to the Commission. Framework Directive 89/391/EEC makes no direct reference to psychosocial risks; the Workplace Directive 89/654/EEC was written to cover employers' premises, leaving rules unclear for those who now work off-site; and the Display Screen Equipment Directive still refers to diskette drives, modems and typewriters, and excludes portable systems not in prolonged use at a workstation, now the standard tools of the job.

All Member States have transposed the principles of the Framework Directive, but it sets minimum requirements and leaves them free to go further. The consequence, as ETUI research puts it, is that EU countries share no legally binding common standards on psychosocial risks, and workers are unevenly protected. A 2023 study for Parliament's EMPL committee concludes that an EU directive would ensure Member States have minimum standards on psychosocial risks, giving every EU worker the same level of protection. With definitions and practices differing from one country to another, a 2024 peer review compared Member States legislative and enforcement approaches, showing how far national practice diverges, from specific legislation to soft law.

The EU-OSHA assessment of national approaches is instructive for what any EU instrument might contain. Legislation works best, it finds, where it sets clear employer obligations while leaving room to tailor measures to sectoral realities and where legal complexity is avoided, so that rules remain accessible and enforceable. Clear definitions help, because the multifactoral nature of these risks complicates identification. Its 2026 report on preventing psychosocial risks adds that labour inspectorates are pivotal in enforcing legislation, and that training inspectors and building capacity are among the most promising investments.

The Commission has consulted EU social partners on the preparation of the quality jobs act. The first phase closed in January 2026 and the second runs until the end of September 2026. In both consultations, it identifies the growing prevalence of psychosocial risks at work as a challenge the current rules do not adequately address. The Commission is exploring the way forward in its second-stage consultation, with options on the table ranging from binding to voluntary, or a mix of both.

On the legislative side, the scope of the Workplace and Display Screen Equipment Directives could be enlarged, provisions added on the specific needs of women and vulnerable groups, or the two texts merged. Particular hazards could also be tackled directly: psychosocial risks, sexual harassment included, alongside ergonomic and heat-related issues. Either the existing duty to assess risks under Directive 89/391/EEC could be clarified to reach them, or new minimum standards for prevention could be written. On the non-legislative side, the Commission could issue guidance on telework and psychosocial risks.

Member State positions and interested parties' opinions

The Spanish Presidency of the Council put mental health on the agenda in 2023. The Council conclusions on mental health and precarious work invited Member States to ensure the effective application of EU and national existing rules, to require employers to include the management of psychosocial risks in occupational risk assessments, and to strengthen the guidance provided by labour inspectorates. The Council also encouraged the Commission to reflect on an adequate policy for addressing psychosocial risks at work, based on the obligations already laid down in the Framework Directive, and adapted to the new realities of working life, considering the right to disconnect as a preventive measure. The conclusions themselves recall that the Framework Directive covers psychosocial risks only implicitly.

The Belgian Presidency took the file further in 2024, devoting a high-level conference in Brussels to mental health at work, and pressing for a strong EU legislative framework. Belgium, whose own rules are among the most developed in the Union, also hosted the Commission's peer review, comparing national legislative and enforcement approaches.

Under the 2026 Irish Presidency, the Council programme announces it will lead the discussion on how to create and support high-quality jobs in modern labour markets.

Social partners have manifested different views on the subject for years: 34 EU-level organisations, 12 trade unions and 22 employer organisations replied to the first-phase quality jobs act consultation. According to the Commission staff working document, trade unions speak with one voice, calling for binding rules on psychosocial risks, with workload brought within what employers must assess. They also support the move to bring today's digital devices under the Workplace and Display Screen Equipment Directives. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), echoed by the sectoral federations, has been making that case for some time, as its 2024 resolution shows. IndustriALL, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT) and European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW), extend the demand to climate-related risks.

Employer organisations see no need for new legislation, as BusinessEurope's position paper explains. Employers agree that the Workplace and Display Screen Equipment Directives could be revised, but hold that the existing acquis is already robust and that EU support should focus on practical tools rather than new rules. BusinessEurope goes further, advocating a merger of both directives and a clarification that psychosocial and ergonomic hazards already fall within the employer's risk-assessment duties under the Framework Directive. It asks that legal feasibility, proportionality and flexible working arrangements be preserved. SMEunited agrees on an update to the Workplace Directive, but holds that employers' obligations should go no further than informing workers.

European Parliament views

Parliament has been calling for legislation on psychosocial risks and mental health at work for years.

In its January 2021 legislative resolution on the right to disconnect, Parliament asked for a directive establishing that right, pointing to the blurring of boundaries caused by always-on digital work. It returned to the theme in March 2022, in a resolution on a new EU strategic framework on health and safety at work post-2020, and again in July 2022, in its resolution on mental health in the digital world of work. This last asked for a broader binding agenda: a legislative initiative on psychosocial risks; a legislative framework for telework minimum arrangements; the transformation of the 2003 recommendation on the European schedule of occupational diseases into a directive, with work-related mental health disorders added to the list; and, for the first time in a Parliament resolution, a legislative proposal on artificial intelligence in the workplace.

In response to the Commission communication on a comprehensive mental health approach, Parliament adopted a further own-initiative resolution on mental health in December 2023, welcoming the Commission's approach as a first step, but pressing for more. It renewed the call for a legislative initiative on the management of psychosocial risks at work, and invited the Commission to review the Occupational Safety and Health Framework Directive itself, to make it more effective in addressing mental health at work.

Most recently, in December 2025, Parliament adopted a legislative-initiative resolution on digitalisation, artificial intelligence and algorithmic management in the workplace, asking the Commission to adopt rules on transparency, human oversight and worker involvement where automated systems take decisions affecting workers. Its recommendations refer to psychosocial risks directly: employers would have to evaluate the risks these systems pose to workers' health, including psychosocial and ergonomic risks, and labour inspectorates would oversee their effects on workers' physical and mental health.

A dedicated file has followed. On 2 September 2026, the Employment and Social Affairs Committee adopted its legislative-initiative report on psychosocial risk, stress and mental health at work (rapporteur: Estelle Ceulemans, S&D, Belgium). It asks the Commission to assess the existing legislation and then bring forward a legislative proposal, setting minimum requirements. The report has yet to reach plenary, and the outcome remains to be seen. If endorsed by Parliament, the Commission would have three months to indicate how it plans to follow up on the request or explain why it will not act on Parliament's recommendations.