European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
Eurofound's ERM database on restructuring-related legal regulations provides information on regulations in the Member States of the European Union and Norway which are explicitly or implicitly linked to anticipating and managing change.
Articles 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24 of the Leave (Paternity, Parental, Caring, Force Majeure) and Flexible Work Arrangements for Work-Life Balance Law of 2022.
The Law aims to balance/reconcile professional and family life for working parents or carers, through the establishment of individual rights, based on the EU Directive 2019/1158 on Work- Life Balance. Specifically, the Law granted or expanded the rights to:
paternity leave, parental leave, carers' leave and absence from work for reasons of force majeure·
flexible working arrangements for working parents or carers.
According to article 8 of the Law, a working parent, who has completed six (6) months of continuous employment with the same employer, is entitled to receive parental leave. The maximum duration of parental leave is eighteen (18) weeks for each child, while in the case of a widowed parent or a single parent, either due to removal of parental care from the other parent or non-recognition of the child by him, the duration of parental leave extends to twenty-three (23) weeks (article 8(3) of the Law).
It is noted that the right to receive parental leave is an individual and non-transferable right for each parent, with the exception of the possibility of transferring nine (9) weeks from the remainder of one parent's leave to the remainder of the other parent's leave.
Social partners identified numerous gaps and weaknesses regarding the law. A serious flaw they recognized is the fact that the law provides for five days of unpaid leave for care annually, and seven days of unpaid absence annually, for reasons of force majeure, connected with urgent family reasons. Also, the parental leave allowance does not cover the self-employed - the Ministry of Labor has pledged to resolve the issue by the first half of 2023, but no such development came to be up until the point of writing (October 2023). Another alleged flaw, again regarding the parental leave, is the law's provision allowing the employer to decide whether to approve or reject parental leave and whether to grant flexible working arrangements for care reasons.
It should also be noted that the law belatedly fulfilled the obligation of the Republic of Cyprus to harmonize with Directive 2019/1158, which should have happened by August 2022. Additionally, until June 2023 payments regarding parental leave could not be made because the government had not prepared a relevant mechanism in time, with the result that those who applied under the new legislation had to wait for the allowance.
Eurofound (2023), Cyprus: Working time flexibility, Restructuring legislation database, Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/legislationdb/working-time-flexibility/cyprus
Between the end of 2022 and the first half of 2023, almost 300,000 employees working for ‘big tech’ companies were laid off across the world, making headlines for months in global media. This development has been a shock, considering the high numbers of jobs in well-known tech corporations with a reputation for offering good working conditions and well-paid positions.
The retail banking sector is fertile ground for studying the impacts of digitalisation on work and employment. Financial services are increasingly provided online, without the intermediary of customer-facing institutions. Many banks in the sector have been undergoing serial restructuring since the global financial crisis, and it is one of the few service sectors with stagnant or declining employment.
Since 2011, the Restructuring support instruments database of the EU PolicyWatch has been collecting information on measures that assist companies and workers to anticipate and manage restructuring. This article looks at measures in the database aimed at supporting employees and employers during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022).
Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor database reveals the impact of the energy crisis on employment in the EU. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, energy prices have hit record highs. The European Commission imposed sanctions and limitations on the import of oil and gas from Russia, which has reacted by reneging on supply commitments to many Member States.
