The Chamber of Deputies has rejected the bill presented by the opposition to introduce the short working week in Italy too. More specifically, the text of the proposed law provided for the gradual reduction of weekly working hours from 40 to 32, with the same salary and divisible into 4 days or 5 days (with reduced daily hours).
The Peninsula, therefore, is not added to the list of European countries that are testing the short working week to evaluate the results – including Belgium, Iceland, Spain and the United Kingdom – although some private Italian companies have nevertheless started an experiment over the last few years. But what is the situation at European level?
As confirmed by the latest EUROSTAT data (published in 2025 and relating to 2024), EU citizens work on average 36 hours a week, with minimums of 32.1 hours in the Netherlands and peaks of 39.8 hours in Greece. Clearly, the statistics take into account both hours worked for full-time and non-full-time contracts part time.
The new EUROSTAT data, which will be released by May 2026, will however have to take into account some regulatory changes, first of all the extension of the working day in Greece, approved in October 2025, which introduced the possibility of extending the working day up to 13 hours a day (but only for a maximum of 37 days a year).
The average working week in Europe: the map of the countries
According to what reported by EUROSTAT, the EU average of weekly working hours is 36: the data includes workers aged between 20 and 64 who carry out their main activity, as full-time or even part-time work. In this ranking, Italy is positioned in line with the average of the 27 member states, with 36.1 hours of work per week.
This is a decreasing number of hours compared to 2014, when the European average was around 37 hours per week: over the course of this decade, in fact, several countries have adopted policies aimed at reducing the number of hours.
Going into more detail, there are however notable differences between EU member states, as is clearly visible in the map below: in 2024 (latest available data) the longest working weeks were recorded in Greece (39.8 hours), Bulgaria (39.0), Poland (38.9) and Romania (38.8). In contrast, the Netherlands had the shortest working week (32.1 hours), followed by Denmark, Germany and Austria (33.9 each).
From the point of view of economic activities, however, the sectors for which the longest working week was recorded were agriculture, forestry and fishing (with an average of 41.2 hours of work per week), mining (38.8 hours) and construction (38.7 hours). In contrast, the shortest workweeks were recorded for family business employers (26.7 hours), education (31.9 hours) and arts, entertainment and recreation (32.9 hours).
Short working week in Europe: where they are testing it
But, therefore, which are the European countries that are actually testing the short working week? The first to start the experiment was Belgium, which in 2022 approved a law that allows workers to condense the working week into 4 days, or to leave it unchanged at 5. In practice, therefore, it is not a real short week, at best compressed: the total hours of work remain 38 per week, but employees are given the freedom to choose how to divide the number of hours per day.
Iceland (which is not part of the EU, but is working to present its candidacy) has also taken this direction and today between 80% and 90% of its employees work approximately 36 hours per week. Similarly, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom are trying to gradually introduce this social change, also with government support, but so far no national legislation has been approved, while there is an increase (as in the case of Italy) in private companies experimenting with the reduction of the working week.
Finally, let’s not forget France where for over 25 years the working week has been set at 35 hours, on the basis of a reform introduced in 2000 by the then socialist government. In recent years, however, some members of the French government have reiterated the need to raise the threshold of weekly hours, thanks to the growing public debt and the need for greater productivity at a national level.
