Four-day working week in Europe: experiments, results and national challenges compared

This is a legislative choice that focuses on flexibility and voluntariness rather than rigid imposition. The stated aim is to offer workers a better work-life balance, but making the model experimental rather than automatic. If the test is successful, some employers may decide to make the scheme permanent.

In the Netherlands and Denmark, the 'short week' is expressed more through the overall reduction of working hours than through the adoption of four fixed days. In the Netherlands, the average weekly working hours are among the lowest in Europe, largely due to the massive spread of part-time contracts. This makes it difficult to speak of a real short week 'compressed' into four days, because many workers already have reduced hours, albeit spread over several days.

Denmark, on the other hand, has long had a relatively short working week - averaging less than 34 hours - and a work culture that values leisure time and work-life balance. There is no law mandating a four-day week, but the Danish model is often cited as a virtuous example of work organisation and quality of life for employees.

In France, the discussion on the four-day working week is part of a historical context already favourable to the reduction of working time. Since 2000, in fact, the 35-hour week law has set a legal limit to working time, although its actual application varies between sectors and contract types. In recent years, some French companies have experimented with forms of time compression, allowing employees to concentrate their weekly hours on four days without a reduction in salary, especially in the private sector and in large cities.

The results: workers report a better quality of life, more time for the family and lower stress levels, while companies often do not notice a significant reduction in productivity, provided it is accompanied by effective internal reorganisation. However, the adoption of the short week in France is still limited and depends heavily on the willingness of companies to manage flexible working hours and on local collective bargaining.

While many European countries are experimenting with the short week, Greece is going in the opposite direction. In 2025, Athens further extended flexibility in favour of companies: the maximum threshold of hours that can be worked for the same employer was raised from 12 to 13 per day - a limit that in the past only applied in the case of several employers - and the possibility of spreading the weekly schedule over four days was extended to the whole year, but without reducing the total hours. In fact, therefore, this is not a 'real' short week, but a different organisation of working time, which may result in longer days.

Unlike elsewhere in Europe, Greece has no national pilot programmes or systematic studies on the effects of reduced working time in terms of errors, accidents, employee health or productivity. Yet the social demand for reduced working hours is very strong. The General Confederation of Workers, for the first time last year, called for a reduction of the working week to 37.5 hours over five days; the communist trade union PAME proposes 35 hours, while some grassroots unions are pushing for 30 hours.

A survey conducted by Metron Analysis for INE-GSEE in September 2025 confirmed the gap between workers' expectations and the government's direction. 94% of private sector employees would like to reduce their working hours by at least 2.5 hours while maintaining the same salary; the percentage drops to 78% in the case of a wage cut, but is still very high, a sign of the strong pressure for a work-life balance. Over 80% of the sample believe that a reduction from 40 to 37.5 hours would improve mental and physical health, family and social life, individual productivity and stress levels.

A more structural finding also emerges from the same survey: the extension of working days to 13 hours tends to normalise already widespread practices. Seven out of ten workers claim to have worked what was previously considered an illegal fifth hour of overtime; in 67% of cases they did so at the employer's initiative. Almost half have worked 13 hours in a single day for two or more employers, a situation that is particularly common among those under 30. It is therefore not surprising that 56% of respondents reject the idea of a 13-hour day, even if balanced by more free time on other days. The link with demographics is also striking: more than six out of ten workers say that the current hours discourage the decision to have children or expand them, with even higher percentages among women and singles.

Greece formally allows the four-day week from 2021 through flexibility mechanisms, but until the last reform this only applied to half of the year and to seasonal sectors, such as industry. Since the pandemic, some large companies - including the Greek subsidiary of Grant Thornton - have experimented with a short week only in the summer months, when production pressure is lower. But the application remains episodic, individual and marginal, far from the idea of structural reform.

In Lithuania, the issue has returned to centre stage thanks to the strong support of Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė, who is convinced that the four-day working week is 'inevitable' and should become standard. But the consensus is not unanimous. The trade union LPSDPS, represented by Aleksandras Posochovas, appreciates the idea of lightening the daily load in order to increase family and leisure time. At the same time, however, he fears that the flexibility of the Lithuanian labour code - with numerous alternative contracts and self-employed collaborations - pushes workers, instead of resting, to look for other jobs to compensate for the loss of income or achieve personal financial goals. Posochovas therefore proposes a different path: not simply 'four days', but a real reduction of the working week, e.g. to 36 or 35 hours, as is the case in Denmark or France, giving companies the freedom to choose whether to shorten the working days or to shorten them.

Remigijus Žemaitaitis, a member of the Nemunas Aušra party, also warns that a general reduction could penalise sectors already under pressure, such as health and education. According to him, a four-day week could make it necessary to resort to foreign labour to cover shifts, a risk that, he argues, Lithuania cannot afford.

On the economic side, the director of the Association of Lithuanian Retailers, Rūta Vainienė, expresses great concern: if employees really worked one day less, the drop in production could translate into a significant loss of GDP and lower tax revenues. In an economy where productivity is struggling to keep pace with wage growth, reducing working hours without compensating with efficiency,' she explains, 'is a gamble.

*This article is part of the European collaborative journalism project "Pulse"