The Right to Disconnect: The Law Exists, but the Calendar Decides

In at least eleven European countries, some form of law protects the right to disconnect.

Yet meetings held after 8 p.m. rose 16% in a single year.

Here’s the paradox this piece starts from, and I’ll state the thesis plainly: the law, on its own, does not protect people’s time. What decides is the culture of whoever leads. And it’s not an opinion — it’s what the European agency that studies working conditions states, in black and white.

What the law says in Europe (and what it doesn’t)

Let’s start with the facts, because here it’s easy to confuse what is written with what actually happens.

According to the Labour Research Department, already by April 2024 eleven EU member states had some form of regulation on the right to disconnect: Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. Eleven countries, eleven different models. And it’s precisely the variety that tells us something.

France was the pioneer. With the Loi Travail of 2016, in force since 2017, it requires companies with more than 50 employees to negotiate rules on disconnection. But pay attention to what it actually imposes: penalties apply for the failure to negotiate, not for a substantive violation of the right. Translated: French law obliges you to sit down at the table, not necessarily to honour the agreement.

At the opposite end, Ireland chose a single non-binding code of conduct: no obligation, no penalty. Belgium and Portugal, instead, have real legislation, with penalties aimed directly at companies.

And the Union as a whole? No binding directive. In January 2021 the European Parliament approved a resolution calling for a European law on the subject; in April 2024 the Commission launched a consultation of the social partners on fair telework and disconnection. Since then: consultations still open, no binding text. The European level is a construction site.

Do more laws mean more rights?

Eurofound, the Union’s tripartite agency, tackled the question from its most practical angle: does regulation really deliver, in concrete terms, the right to disconnect?

The figure the survey returns is the one that should give policy writers pause. Eight workers out of ten — in companies with and without the right to disconnect — regularly receive work communications outside their hours. The presence of the rule, on its own, does not move the number. Something else changes: where a disconnection policy exists, workers report higher satisfaction and fewer stress-related disorders; where it doesn’t, headaches, anxiety and tension grow. The difference, in short, isn’t made by the right on paper: it’s made by how seriously that right is taken by the organisation.

The European Parliament, citing the same research, adds the technological piece: those who regularly use digital tools remotely are more than twice as likely to exceed 48 working hours a week than those who work on site. Technology isn’t neutral: it stretches the day whenever no one decides where to draw the line.

Why evening meetings rise despite the rules

While laws multiply, the numbers of reality move in the opposite direction.

The Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025, based on Microsoft 365 telemetry and a survey of 31,000 workers across 31 markets, captures what it calls the “infinite workday”: meetings after 8 p.m. up 16% year on year and — among those already connected at 6 a.m., 40% are checking email — while nearly 30% are back in their inbox by 10 p.m.

A caveat has to be stated straight away, for honesty’s sake: these are global figures, aggregated across 31 markets. Not a precise comparison between European countries, nor a measure of what happens where a disconnection law exists. You can’t claim the phenomenon is worse precisely in the eleven countries with the rule — the public sources don’t say that. But the overall picture is clear: if the goal is to help people disconnect, we aren’t achieving it.

Italy’s Law 34/2026: what changes

And so we come to Italy, where the topic turned hot for a precise reason.

It’s worth saying where we start from. As Il Sole 24 Ore reconstructed while analysing the Eurofound report, in Italy the law does not recognise disconnection as an explicit right: it defers its regulation to individual bargaining between employer and worker, and only for agile work at that. A right delegated to agreement, in short, not guaranteed as such.

Against this backdrop comes the news. On 7 April 2026 the Law of 11 March 2026, no. 34 entered into force, the so-called “Annual SME Law.” With article 11, which amends the Consolidated Safety Act (Legislative Decree 81/2008), for the first time the failure to deliver the annual written safety notice to smart-working employees becomes an offence. And that notice must now explicitly cover the use of display screens, stress from hyperconnection, and the right to disconnect.

And here a misunderstanding that circulates a lot needs to be cleared away, because it’s exactly the kind of alarmism that confuses. There is no “offence of hyperconnection”: the law does not punish the boss who writes an email at 10 p.m. The infraction concerns the failure to deliver the notice — a limited procedural obligation, punished with arrest from two to four months or a fine (up to €7,403.96). Hyperconnection, in the text, is not an offence: it’s a risk the notice must declare. It’s a difference that changes everything — and worth keeping in mind every time a headline promises the “end of evening emails by law.”

In Italy, moreover, Bill S. 1290 is pending in the Senate — the so-called Sensi Bill, presented on 6 November 2024 and assigned to the 10th Committee — proposing at least 12 consecutive hours of no contact after a shift and an administrative penalty of €500 to €3,000 for each worker contacted in violation. It’s a bill, not an active law — but it clearly signals the direction the topic is moving.

What a company’s calendar reveals

And so we return to the thesis, with one more layer.

If the rule isn’t enough — and Eurofound shows it with numbers — then where is the right to disconnect really measured? In the most ordinary and most honest place there is: the calendar.

Routinely scheduling meetings during the lunch break, early in the morning or late in the afternoon empties out the right to disconnect regardless of any clause. More than a contractual rule, it’s a cultural pact about what counts as working time. And the Eurofound data confirms it from the ground up: if eight people out of ten are contacted outside hours even where the right is written, the problem isn’t the absence of the rule — it’s the habit the rule doesn’t touch.

When a boss writes at 10 p.m., they aren’t breaking a law. They’re communicating an implicit norm, and that norm weighs more than any signed document. The policy says what the company would like to be. The calendar says what the company is.

It’s here, incidentally, that the theme widens: protecting people’s time isn’t one more constraint, it’s part of the question that concerns every transformation — how you change the way of working without losing the people who do it.

For honesty’s sake, all of it must be said: laws aren’t useless. The French model, by imposing negotiation, at least forced companies to sit down at the table. It has a symbolic and negotiating value that shouldn’t be diminished. But symbolic value doesn’t protect anyone’s evening.

The question that remains

We know the regulatory frame. Culture is another matter: it isn’t legislated, it’s built day by day.

Look at your company calendar for the last two weeks. Not the written policy: the real calendar. How many invitations after 7 p.m.? How many emails sent before 7 a.m.? How many lunch breaks taken up by a “quick” call?

The disconnection policy, in your organisation — is it actually applied?