FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG LEGISLATING A RIGHT TO DISCONNECT 4 ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS There is no question that the French law has been a great catalyst for initiatives around the world to legislate a right to disconnect, as all the laws and proposals outlined above draw upon it to some extent. In this section, we analyse the different laws and proposals to develop a set of recommendations that can be relied upon when seeking to introduce a right to disconnect in national legislation. In Romania, the need to regulate employees' right to disconnect started to be discussed as one of the practical aspects of employment relations during the Covid-19 period, when the number of employees working remotely has increased, without employers having in place policies detailing specific procedures for the organisation of teleworking time and without employees having attended specific training programmes to adapt to the teleworking specificity in order to be able to claim and benefit from their already recognised rights. In some areas, the volume of activity has increased, including as a result of the practical challenges faced in using electronic information and communication technologies, which require considerable time to get used to. In other cases, overlapping between work and family life that is unavoidable when working from home when other family members are also present in the same area is difficult to handle for employees and it results in working late hours, outside normal working times. This situation faced by teleworkers requires a specific right to disconnect to be recognised for employees. Given the necessity for national legislation to function as a consistent system of legal provisions, which should mutually reinforce each other, be interconnected in a logical, consistent manner without contradictions, any new rules should incorporated in existing legislation. Moreover, any new rules should be adopted with a view to actual practice in the field of labour relations, the role that the social partners and government authorities usually assume with regard to similar rights and similar aspects, in order to be easily assimilated in practice and achieve its final purpose: its implementation and observance by the parties in an employment relationship. In order to attain justified recognition and, eventually, regulation of employees' right to disconnect in a way that is best geared to needs with respect to employment relations in Romania, the following aspects should be considered: Enshrined in existing legislation – the issues described in the foregoing, which have come up during the pandemic period, result in a need to regulate employees' right to disconnect primarily in connection with work performed remotely (telework and teleworkers). Of course, such new rules must also be incorporated in existing legislation regulating employees' rights that are to be protected: health and safety of workers, maximum working hours and minimum daily and weekly rest periods. Legal recognition- the right to disconnect should ideally be explicitly recognised as a right and hence laid down in national law(and be explicit) because different language can be used to describe the issue of disconnection and the need for work-life balance, while it must be ensured that its essential meaning is generally acknowledged and mandatorily observed by any subsequent rules(either laws, collective agreements, internal rules or policies of employers or individual labour agreements) to remove the risk of skewing its meaning by improper, incorrect or faulty wordings. To the same end, legal provisions should define the right by providing a brief explanation/definition of the right to disconnect and highlight its most important principles in law (its underlying principles may be provided if such principles are not already laid down by legislation in force- i.e. the legislation already ensures the protection of workers who exercise their rights recognised by law, they cannot suffer any negative consequences if they exercise such rights and any such negative consequence can be nullified by a court of law; as well non-discrimination is also ensured by the legislation in force, so that any favourable treatment afforded to workers who are constantly connected may be considered as an act of discrimination). Providing a rationale for recognition of the right to disconnect may be regarded as not absolutely necessary to be included in the wording of a legal provision, but it may be found useful because in the event unclear subsequent rules adopted based on the legal provisions have to be interpreted, such rationale would constitute useful grounds to facilitate correct interpretation of such rules. Recognition of employees' right to disconnect in legal provisions must be equally applicable to all workers regardless of their employment status, sector of work, work location, position and responsibilities, etc.(implicate all employees). 1 0