The EU Member States and institutions have committed themselves to pursuing a strategy that will help Europe to come out stronger from the crisis and turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. The Council of the European union acknowledges that not only equality between women and men but also strategies of work-life balance (WLB) are fundamental value (of the European Union) and in this context is important link between productivity which is vital to economic growth, prosperity and competitiveness. Increasing product-market competition is believed to be a driving force behind higher productivity. However, even those critics of globalization who accept this argument claim that there is a hard trade-off because tougher competition comes at the price of reducing work-life balance. Others, by contrast, argue that competition can spur better WLB practices and therefore higher productivity, so there is a ‘win-win’ situation. The overall aim of the project is the experimentation of a new and best models addressed to workers’ representatives on work-life balance, diversity management, equal opportunities and flexibility issues in order to strengthen workers’ representatives abilities in collective bargaining activity and to improve the development of better industrial relations and social dialogue on such relevant issues, starting from a comparative analysis of the legal framework and the analysis of best practices in Italy, Belgium, Hungary, and Romania, about flexible working time schedules, often considered to be a mechanism to support working parents and workers who care for relatives with disability in combining work and family life; as long as ‘flexibility’ continues to be considered as mainly a ‘female’ way of organising working time, the use of these schemes may offer limited choice. In this context, improving living and working conditions has become a major objective for the European institutions.

The EU Member States and institutions have committed themselves to pursuing a strategy that will help Europe to come out stronger from the crisis and turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. The Council of the European union acknowledges that not only equality between women and men but also strategies of work-life balance (WLB) are fundamental value (of the European Union) and in this context is important link between productivity which is vital to economic growth, prosperity and competitiveness. Increasing product-market competition is believed to be a driving force behind higher productivity. However, even those critics of globalization who accept this argument claim that there is a hard trade-off because tougher competition comes at the price of reducing work-life balance. Others, by contrast, argue that competition can spur better WLB practices and therefore higher productivity, so there is a ‘win-win’ situation. The overall aim of the project is the experimentation of a new and best models addressed to workers’ representatives on work-life balance, diversity management, equal opportunities and flexibility issues in order to strengthen workers’ representatives abilities in collective bargaining activity and to improve the development of better industrial relations and social dialogue on such relevant issues, starting from a comparative analysis of the legal framework and the analysis of best practices in Italy, Belgium, Hungary, and Romania, about flexible working time schedules, often considered to be a mechanism to support working parents and workers who care for relatives with disability in combining work and family life; as long as ‘flexibility’ continues to be considered as mainly a ‘female’ way of organising working time, the use of these schemes may offer limited choice. In this context, improving living and working conditions has become a major objective for the European institutions.

The EU Member States and institutions have committed themselves to pursuing a strategy that will help Europe to come out stronger from the crisis and turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. The Council of the European union acknowledges that not only equality between women and men but also strategies of work-life balance (WLB) are fundamental value (of the European Union) and in this context is important link between productivity which is vital to economic growth, prosperity and competitiveness. Increasing product-market competition is believed to be a driving force behind higher productivity. However, even those critics of globalization who accept this argument claim that there is a hard trade-off because tougher competition comes at the price of reducing work-life balance. Others, by contrast, argue that competition can spur better WLB practices and therefore higher productivity, so there is a ‘win-win’ situation. The overall aim of the project is the experimentation of a new and best models addressed to workers’ representatives on work-life balance, diversity management, equal opportunities and flexibility issues in order to strengthen workers’ representatives abilities in collective bargaining activity and to improve the development of better industrial relations and social dialogue on such relevant issues, starting from a comparative analysis of the legal framework and the analysis of best practices in Italy, Belgium, Hungary, and Romania, about flexible working time schedules, often considered to be a mechanism to support working parents and workers who care for relatives with disability in combining work and family life; as long as ‘flexibility’ continues to be considered as mainly a ‘female’ way of organising working time, the use of these schemes may offer limited choice. In this context, improving living and working conditions has become a major objective for the European institutions.