Burnout: Parliament Puts the Commission to the Test

Burnout and stress in the workplace are rising at an alarming rate. According to a recent survey by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), nearly one in three workers in Europe (29 per cent) report stress, anxiety or depression caused or made worse by their work. Likewise, Eurofound’s 2023 study Psychosocial risks to workers’ well-being shows that “the share of employees reporting that they work at high intensity increased from 27% in 2015 to nearly 40% in 2021”.

Accordingly, the multidimensional “work intensity index” scores in Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Surveys continuously got worse from 2010 to 2024, confirming a continuous intensification of work. Healthcare stands out across sectors: its “workers report very high level of emotional demands (hiding their feelings, dealing with angry clients and finding themselves in emotionally disturbing situations the most) but also work at high speed, work to tight deadlines and experience the most frequent and disruptive interruptions”. Psychosocial risks are also very high in sectors that are simply too new to be included in the official European working conditions surveys, for example, in the cybersecurity industry.

These findings are alarming, not least given the commodifying thrust of the EU’s economic governance prescriptions for public services, including healthcare, and the “labour extraction potential of new technology” in the workplace, both of which threaten to push psychosocial stress at work higher still.

For the Belgian trade unionist and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Estelle Ceulemans, the matter is therefore clear: European legislation is needed to prevent, identify and manage psychosocial risks in the workplace. Fine words are not enough. That is why Ceulemans launched her initiative report on “Psychosocial risks, stress and mental health at work”, which has just been adopted, first by the responsible committee and then by the European Parliament as a whole, the latter by 413 votes to 210 with 29 abstentions.

The European Commission is now expected to present a draft law to strengthen the protection of psychosocial health across Europe. After all, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen committed herself, first in 2019 and again before her re-election in 2024, to following up on Parliament’s legislative requests.

According to the European Parliament, illnesses caused by psychological distress, such as burnout, should in future also be recognised as occupational diseases. The Parliament also calls for a zero-tolerance policy towards harassment in the workplace. Strengthening labour inspectorates and the role of the social partners in the field of mental health is another key demand.

Employees should also enjoy much stronger protections so that they can exercise their “right to switch off” professional electronic devices outside working hours. Furthermore, a prospective EU directive should reinforce the protection of employees from algorithmic surveillance. Supporting employees as they return to work after burnout is a further demand.

The committee had also wanted to shift the legal burden of proof to employers, so that they would have to demonstrate that an illness is not work-related, but this demand was struck out in plenary. By contrast, the plenary insisted that any significant reorganisation of work should be subject to a prior psychosocial risk assessment, carried out in cooperation with workers and their representatives. The adopted text also gives workers’ representatives a clear definition of “moral distress”: “distress arising when workers are constrained from acting in accordance with professional, ethical or clinical standards, including because of understaffing, insufficient resources, conflicting instructions or unsafe organisational arrangements”. These provisions matter particularly in the often understaffed healthcare sector.

It remains to be seen whether these improvements will actually materialise. So far, neither the far-right parties nor the employers’ lobby BusinessEurope has been able to get its way. The former oppose any tangible progress in the area of occupational health and safety. The latter, together with other employer federations, called on MEPs to strike out the report’s legislative annex and every reference to new EU legislation.

It will soon become clear, however, how much importance the Christian Democratic parties attach to the dignity and health of workers. They hold the majority in the European Parliament and the Commission, either in coalition with the Social Democrats, the Liberals, the Left, and the Greens, or with the three factions of the far and extreme right.

The European Commission intends to present its Quality Jobs Act, the legislative follow-up to last December’s Quality Jobs Roadmap, by the end of the year, after the European Trade Union Confederation declined to open social-dialogue negotiations with the European employers’ organisations, given the social partners’ irreconcilable visions of whether a European Quality Jobs Act is needed at all. It will be interesting to see how much weight the Commission gives to psychosocial health and safety at work.