August 22, 2026

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The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

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What the EU Taiwan Framework Would Actually Have to DoKorea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap ImportsWhat the EU Taiwan Framework Would Actually Have to DoKorea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap Imports
August 22, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
What the EU Taiwan Framework Would Actually Have to DoKorea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap ImportsWhat the EU Taiwan Framework Would Actually Have to DoKorea Signed a Digital Trade Deal That Nobody Has RatifiedCritical Minerals in Mongolia Still Have to Cross Two BordersCan an Indonesia Trade Deal Survive Two Years of RatifyingCross-Border Data Orders Went Live Before the Plumbing DidPlatform Work Rules Take Effect in December and Few Are ReadyCan Europe’s Firefighting Fleet Keep Pace With EU WildfiresThe AI Act Deadline Passed on 2 August and Nothing BitWhy Construction Keeps Shrinking While Confidence ImprovesAccession Talks Stall Again and September 1 Is the TestBrussels Applied a Trade Deal It Cannot Yet RatifyAfrica’s Power Market Now Needs Money More Than BlueprintsLong-Term Budget Talks Enter Autumn Without a Council LineForeign Subsidies Enforcement Now Turns on a Dublin RaidWho Writes Europe’s Telecom Rules Once Copper DisappearsDisability Cards Exist on Paper and Nowhere Else Until 2028Losing Visa-Free Travel Now Takes a Thirty Percent SwingTwenty Flagship Actions Will Test Whether the Culture Compass WorksEurope’s Quality Jobs Act Now Rests on What Unions Do by SeptemberDoes a Three Euro Parcel Duty Change Anything About Cheap Imports

Unions and Employers Get Six Weeks to Shape the Quality Jobs Act

Fabio Liverani
Council Correspondent, Social Affairs and Employment

Social partners hold an unusual privilege in European law. Before the Commission proposes legislation on working conditions, it must consult them, and if unions and employers prefer to negotiate their own agreement, the Commission steps aside. That clock is now running on one of the most consequential labour files of this mandate.

The Commission opened the second-stage consultation on the Quality Jobs Act on 20 July, and responses close on 28 September. The first stage ran through December 2025 and January 2026 and drew submissions from 34 European-level organisations, 12 of them trade unions and 22 employer bodies. That imbalance in numbers rarely translates into an imbalance in influence, but it does shape how the Commission reads the room.

Ursula von der Leyen announced the initiative in her 2025 State of the Union address, and the 2026 work programme confirmed it. The Act promises to update EU rules on working conditions, health and safety and workers’ rights while, in the Commission’s framing, supporting productivity and competitiveness. Holding those two aims together is the whole political problem.

Algorithmic management sits at the centre of the consultation. Software now allocates shifts, scores performance, sets pace targets and, in some workplaces, recommends dismissals. The Commission wants automated decisions to become more transparent and more human-centred, and it wants limits on excessive monitoring. Unions read that as a rulebook for AI at work. Employer groups read it as a compliance layer landing on top of the AI Act, the Platform Work Directive and the GDPR.

Enforcement forms the second pillar. The Commission is examining stronger labour inspection capacity, sharper sanctions for non-compliance and a bigger role for social dialogue in policing standards. Inspectorates across much of the Union run thin, and rules that nobody checks change little on a construction site or in a warehouse.

The third strand covers the digital and green transitions, where the quality jobs agenda connects to skills policy. The Commission has launched six pilot projects under its Skills Guarantee aimed at workers whose jobs face restructuring, an attempt to move support upstream of redundancy rather than after it.

Industry federations have already warned that new obligations will raise costs at a moment when European manufacturers face energy prices and tariff pressure that their competitors do not. Trade unions counter that a decade of wage restraint and precarious contracts produced the labour shortages employers now complain about, and that better jobs are the fix rather than the burden. Both arguments contain more evidence than either side concedes.

Watch for one signal in late September. If unions and employers open negotiations under Article 155 of the Treaty, the file leaves the ordinary legislative procedure and the Parliament loses its amending role. That path produced the parental leave and telework frameworks, and it collapsed on other occasions when employers walked away.

Nothing obliges either side to try. The likelier outcome is a Commission proposal in the coming months, followed by the familiar grind through Council working parties and the employment committee, with the substance of algorithmic management fought line by line.

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