FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG LEGISLATING A RIGHT TO DISCONNECT 1 BACKGROUND The right to disconnect refers in short to the right of workers to disconnect from their work and to not receive or answer any work-related emails, calls, or messages outside of normal working hours. It is designed to establish boundaries delimiting the use of electronic communication and to provide workers with an opportunity to improve their work-life balance and ensure that they receive adequate rest and family time. It also protects workers against any negative repercussions for disconnecting. The right to disconnect emerged as a legal right in France in 2016 and quickly spread to other countries in Europe. Chile was the first country outside Europe to legislate a right to disconnect in 2020 in connection with its new law on remote work, which was adopted during the COVID pandemic and then followed by a similar law being enacted in Argentina a few months later. In Romania as in the most European countries, the right to disconnect is not laid down in laws and regulations currently in force. However, it should be underscored that Romanian labour legislation regulates in a very restrictive manner the amount of working time and, respectively, rest time, their limits, as well as the organisation and periods for evidence of working time to be kept on file. Thus, under this legislation, employees may not be lawfully required to perform work outside stipulated working time limits. From a different angle, legislation in the area of health and safety at work ensures the transposition of requirements laid down in European law, including the obligation of employers to ensure health and safety of workers in all aspects related to work. Observance of limits applying to working time is also universally regarded as crucial to ensuring the health and safety of workers. Within this context, no debates have taken place yet on the subject of employees' right to disconnect, no specific draft legislation has been proposed by the government or social partners with the aim of regulating or ensuring in a specific and express manner employees' right to disconnect. Generally 1 Published in the Official Gazette no. 296 on 2 April 2018 2 Art. 33 of the Decree of Romania's President no. 195/2020. 3 The state of emergency was extended by Decree no. 240/2020 regarding the Extension of the State of Emergency in Romanian territory. 4 Published in Official Gazette no. 396 on 15 May 2020. 5 Art. 17 of Law no. 55/2020. 6 https://www.zf.ro/zf-news/revolutie-piata-muncii-munca-acasa-devine­normalitate-companii-dupa-19538313 speaking, legislative recognition of a right to disconnection has not been considered necessary and the absence of any such specific right has not been considered to be an issue. In 2018, after long discussions between the government and social partners on various aspects relating to the content of the draft law on teleworking, the Parliament adopted Law no. 81/2018 on telework activity(Telework Law) ¹. Before this law entered into force, telework was used in practice based on companies' internal policies and their willingness to allow their employees to work from home several days per month, and was viewed as a fringe benefit. Since Law no. 81/2018 entered into force, telework has not registered any significant increase in use. When the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic broke out, telework was considered a very useful mechanism to diminish hygienic risks and protect the health and safety of a large number of employees. On this occasion, although under Law no. 81/2018 telework was based on an agreement between the parties, and by way of derogation, the Decree established state of emergency no. 195/2020 laying down that public and private employers can introduce by unilateral decision, wherever this is possible, work from home or telework during the period of emergency ². Therefore, employees' consent was not necessary in this decision ³. As a result, during this period, employers were allowed to require employees to work online, from home, during working hours. Later, the state of emergency was replaced by a state of alert through other successive acts based on Law no. 55/2020 and providing for certain measures to prevent and combat the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic ⁴. In accordance with this law, employers may decide with employees' consent that employees will perform their work by means of teleworking or from their home ⁵. In this Covid-19 pandemic context, the number of employees who work remotely has increased and is still increasing. According to a report by Eurofound(European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions), in Romania about 18.4% of employees have started working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic ⁶. By comparison, before the onset of the health crisis, only 0.8% of Romanian employees worked from home, according to Eurostat(2019). It is also relevant to underscore here that more than half(58%) of service employees worked from home during the epidemiological crisis, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos Romania in 2