Who Owns the Evening? The Global Rise of the Right to Disconnect

The smartphone did not abolish working hours, but it made their boundaries negotiable. An email can arrive during dinner without requiring anyone to remain in an office, and a manager can reach a team spread across time zones with almost no effort. The right to disconnect has emerged as an attempt to restore a legal boundary where technology blurred a practical one.

The International Labour Organization defines the right to disconnect as workers' ability to disengage from work and refrain from work-related electronic communications during non-work hours. That broad principle, however, has produced markedly different regulatory models. [3]

Eurofound reported in 2026 that 13 EU member states had national provisions by 2025. In Belgium, France and Spain, rules apply across the private sector; Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Slovakia restrict their provisions to teleworkers. Portugal and Slovenia place an active duty on employers not to contact staff during rest periods, while other systems emphasize the employee's freedom not to respond. [1]

This variation reveals a central policy choice. A legal right can be framed defensively, protecting workers who ignore a message, or proactively, limiting the employer's decision to send it. The first model tolerates contact but shields refusal; the second tries to prevent the interruption itself.

Australia offers a particularly explicit version of the defensive model. Employees may refuse to monitor, read or respond to employer or third-party contact outside working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable. Reasonableness depends on factors including the purpose and disruption of the contact, compensation for availability, the worker's responsibilities and personal circumstances. [4]

The policy debate is supported by evidence about working-time quality. Eurofound's 2026 research identifies frequent after-hours contact as one of the features of flexible work most strongly associated with stress, mental strain and poorer work-life balance. It also notes that French employees are now among the EU workers least likely to be contacted outside hours, eight years after France introduced relevant regulation. [2]

Yet legislation cannot by itself create psychological detachment from work. An employee may receive no direct message and still feel pressure to check a team channel, finish unfinished tasks or anticipate the next morning. Informal norms can therefore undermine a formal right without anyone technically violating it.

The issue becomes more complicated in genuinely time-sensitive roles. On-call workers, emergency staff, international teams and senior managers may reasonably accept forms of availability that would be inappropriate for other employees. A credible right to disconnect needs room for such distinctions without turning every exception into the default.

The broader question is not whether technology should be allowed into personal time; it already is. The question is who controls the interruption. As more jurisdictions define that control in law, the end of the workday is becoming less a matter of office doors closing and more a negotiated boundary around attention.