© Illustration by Andrei Cojocaru; photos by Getty Images
Artificial intelligence is becoming established across European businesses, but almost half of companies remain unwilling to trust automated systems when decisions concern their employees, according to a European Commission survey published on 14th October.
The Eurobarometer findings show that 42 per cent of the small and medium-sized enterprises and mid-cap companies surveyed already use artificial intelligence or algorithmic management systems, although most deployment remains limited or experimental. A further 21 per cent intend to introduce such technologies in the future.
Despite this expanding adoption, 49 per cent of respondents said they did not trust artificial intelligence or automated systems to make staff-related decisions. The figures suggest that companies increasingly distinguish between using technology to improve business processes and delegating managerial responsibility to software.
The Commission’s survey of European businesses was conducted between March and April 2026, involving approximately 12,826 telephone interviews with company leaders across the EU’s 27 member states.
The survey provides a more detailed picture of workplace AI than conventional statistics measuring whether companies have adopted the technology.
Among the businesses interviewed, customer service and client relations were the most commonly reported areas of application, accounting for 47 per cent. Monitoring employee performance and productivity accounted for 36 per cent, while logistics, planning and staff scheduling represented 30 per cent.
These functions differ substantially in their consequences for workers and managers.
A system that helps organise deliveries or forecasts customer demand may improve efficiency without directly determining employees’ working conditions. Software that evaluates performance, allocates shifts or recommends staffing changes can influence employment decisions and requires a different level of organisational supervision.
The survey found that 61 per cent of companies considered AI useful in supporting decisions. However, human involvement remained central: 90 per cent of respondents reported that people continued to make decisions, while fully automated decisions accounted for only 2 per cent.
The results undermine the assumption that adopting AI necessarily means transferring control of business operations to autonomous systems.
For many companies, the immediate commercial value lies in processing information more rapidly, identifying patterns and reducing administrative workloads rather than removing human management entirely.
Financial and organisational obstacles continue to limit adoption.
Half of the companies surveyed cited high investment costs, while 49 per cent identified legal uncertainty and 48 per cent pointed to insufficient expertise.
These findings are particularly relevant to small businesses, which frequently lack dedicated technology teams, extensive data infrastructure or the resources to evaluate complex software systems independently.
For such businesses, purchasing AI tools is only one component of the investment. Implementation can also require employee training, changes to internal procedures, data-security assessments and continuing technical support.
The findings add a workplace dimension to concerns raised in EU Today’s earlier examination of Europe’s AI productivity gap, which identified investment, computing capacity and organisational restructuring as obstacles to translating adoption into higher productivity.
A company may purchase sophisticated software without necessarily achieving corresponding improvements in performance. Those improvements depend on whether the technology is integrated into everyday operations and whether employees have the skills to use it effectively.
The survey arrives while the European Commission is considering additional rules on algorithmic management through its proposed Quality Jobs Act.
The initiative is intended to address working conditions, workers’ rights and the increasing use of automated systems in managing employees.
A consultation launched in July asked European employers and trade unions to consider transparency in automated decisions, excessive workplace monitoring and the responsibilities of companies using AI.
The second consultation phase ended in September, allowing social partners to propose negotiated arrangements before the Commission determines its next legislative steps.
The broader regulatory framework is already changing. As EU Today explained when the AI Act entered a new enforcement phase, Brussels has begun enforcing certain obligations for general-purpose AI models, while important requirements for high-risk applications, including employment-related systems, follow a later timetable.
Stand-alone high-risk systems are scheduled to face the relevant obligations from December 2027, with another deadline in August 2028 for high-risk systems embedded in regulated products.
The distinction matters for employers planning investments today. Existing data-protection and employment obligations continue to apply, but some of the AI Act’s more specific compliance requirements remain subject to transition periods.
The Commission’s latest survey indicates that businesses are already exercising caution independently of these future obligations. Their reluctance to automate sensitive staff decisions suggests that accountability, reliability and employee confidence will remain important factors in determining how extensively artificial intelligence is deployed.
For Brussels, the challenge is to establish workable rules for that transition without making implementation prohibitively expensive for smaller companies, which account for much of Europe’s employment and commercial activity.
Four in five new jobs created in Britain since 2014 were taken by migrants while the number of British people on out-of-work benefits increased by 2.3 million, according to a report from the Centre for Social Justice.
The post Migrants Taking Four in Five New Jobs appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
You need 35 years of National Insurance contributions to get the full state pension. Ah, says David Craig, but the unemployed get 'pension credit', which pays exactly the same and comes with piles of freebies thrown in.
The post Want the Highest State Pension? Don’t Bother Working Too Much appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
For Oakland Review of Books, Stephanie Uchino-Beach writes about getting laid off at an education tech company that transformed into an “AI-first outfit.” As as customer success manager, she acted as a liaison to district administrators, school principals, and teachers. While AI could automate some of her tasks, what about the core responsibilities of her CSM role: building real relationships and understanding an educator’s needs? An AI sees data points, not people. This is a sobering read from a former tech worker living in the Bay Area, and an edtech company that has gone all in on AI and forgotten about its mission.
Before I went to work for Silicon Valley, I was a lot of things. A few jobs before this last one, I was an elementary school teacher in Chicago, helping kids learn to read, creating units, planning lessons, and buying supplies with my own money on the weekends, like countless other teachers around the country. I grew up on the Peninsula, and I made the move into Customer Success to get a job that would let me move home. Tech was never my dream; it was a means to an end. My dad studied computer science and still works in tech to this day and enjoys it, so it seemed like a satisfying and fruitful career was plausible. I figured that once I broke in, all my problems would be solved: I could get a house, have a kid, and fulfill every middle-class dream that had always felt slightly out of reach for a millennial like myself.
And yet, job after job, I consistently left feeling unsatisfied. Unsatisfied by how I wasn’t growing and wasn’t developing my skills. Unsatisfied with poor managers who were just in the right place at the right time to be promoted but so often lacked the skills to provide the same success for their employees. Unsatisfied with how the products I worked on could do wrong by the communities we sold them to, even though every company said they were “mission-driven” and “put our customers first.”
It’s getting better all the time (Better, better, better) It’s getting better all the time I admit it’s getting better –The Beatles In an X post, Marko Jukic, senior analyst at Bismarck Analysis, lamented: “Enshittification” is sort of a “safe horny” term for what is really just outright impoverishment and declining living standards due to […]
The post US enshittification vs Chinese involution appeared first on Asia Times.
In this story for Dispatch, Lotte Brundle reports on a surprising trend: young women in the UK are pursuing careers in the death care industry. In a time of high unemployment, funeral home apprenticeships offer an alternative to university, where students accumulate significant debt. While the pay is low and the industry needs to do a better job building awareness that the trajectory exists, the young women who speak to Brundle find the work meaningful and rewarding.
Her inspiration to become an undertaker arrived, as many teenage epiphanies now do, via TikTok. Emily was 15 and had been considering becoming a teacher or journalist when she came across an American woman documenting life inside her own funeral home. “I’d never considered it as a career,” she says. “I didn’t know anyone who was an undertaker, but I just thought how interesting it was.”
Two hours later, she was still scrolling through the woman’s profile, engrossed. Running her own funeral home became Emily’s dream.
Between the first and the second quarter of 2026, 3.1 million unemployed persons aged 15-74 in the EU moved into employment, representing 23.2% of all unemployed in the first quarter of 2026. During this period, 7.0 million (52.8%) remained unemployed and 3.2 million (24.0%) moved out of the labour force.
These figures are taken from recently published data on labour market flows in the second quarter of 2026. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on labour market flows.
Source dataset: lfsi_long_q
The visual and the table give an overview of all changes in labour market status. In the visual, the figures for employment, unemployment and out of the labour force refer to the number of people remaining in each status between the 2 quarters, while the arrows indicate the number of people moving from one status to another.
Source dataset: lfsi_long_q
Of all people in employment in the first quarter of 2026, 2.5 million (1.2%) became unemployed in the second quarter of 2026, and 4.8 million (2.3%) moved out of the labour force.
Of all people recorded as out of the labour force in the first quarter of 2026, 4.2 million (3.7%) entered employment in the second quarter of 2026 and 3.9 million (3.4%) became unemployed.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis triggered an outrage when he proposed that the “unemployment benefits” should last just two months in order to force jobless to take up a work. According to Greek legislation, the unemployment benefit of 526 euros per month increased by 10% for each child runs for maximum 12 months provided that the […]
The post Gov’t spokesman proposes sharp cut of “unemployment benefits” down to just two months appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.
A new study claims to show the scale of psychosocial risks, stress and mental health of those in work.
The findings were made public just ahead of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) vote on psychosocial risks, stress and mental health at work.
The “unique” mapping was carried out across all 27 EU member states
It reveals what it calls “significant differences” in national approaches to tackling the issue.
There are, it goes on, “uneven levels” of worker protection, a problem which “strengthens” the case for a common preventive approach at EU level.
The good news is that a majority of European countries have already introduced legislation to address the problem.
Social partners and courts have also taken action to address these risks, says the report.
The report is called 'Mapping of national laws, collective agreements and jurisprudence concerning work-related psychosocial risks, workplace bullying and work-related stress in the EU27.'
It was conducted by the European Trade Union Institute, he independent research and training centre of the European Trade Union Confederation.
The research was authored by Aude Cefaliello, ETUI Senior Researcher and conducted along with colleagues, Aditya Jain and Stavroula Leka
Cefaliello said: “It is not a lack of action that makes the case for an EU initiative, but rather the fragmented nature of that action and the uneven levels of protection that result from it.”
The report says, “Psychosocial risks at work constitute a major and growing occupational health problem.
“Almost 45% of workers in the EU report being exposed to risks at work that could negatively affect their mental health, and almost one-third experience stress, depression or anxiety linked to work.
What makes the ETUI’s mapping “unique”, says the authors, is that it examines not only how work-related psychosocial risks are defined, regulated and prevented across the Member States, but also the role played by collective bargaining and the courts where legislative frameworks are incomplete.
It states that Europe is “not starting from scratch – but action is urgently needed.”
The findings build on those of the ETUI Policy Brief published in the spring.
It concludes, “The time for a coherent and binding EU approach to psychosocial risk prevention is now. It stresses that psychosocial risks at work should not be reduced to an individual mental health issue: they need to be prevented at source, by addressing inadequacies in work organisation, design and management.”
“While EU occupational safety and health legislation requires employers to protect workers from all work-related risks, psychosocial risks at work are still neither explicitly defined nor specifically regulated at EU level.
“The absence of clear legal obligations contributes to the fragmented national approaches highlighted by the mapping, generating legal uncertainty and uneven levels of worker protection across the EU.”
AI is playing a bigger role in hiring, but laws protect you. Here is what you need to know.
Europe needs top talent, and employers want high-quality hires – the best person for the job – quickly and in a cost-efficient way. So, given this urgency, it’s no surprise that more and more companies are using AI in their hiring processes. From CV screening to interviews, AI can streamline each stage, reduce hiring times and make the whole process more cost-effective.
But there’s a downside to AI-driven recruitment, as a recent Instagram post highlighted. It describes how a jobseeker from Vienna felt ‘dehumanized’ by an AI interview.
The EU takes AI action
This concern isn’t limited to Austria, which is why the EU AI Act classifies using AI in employment decisions as ‘high-risk’. Given the growing AI adoption in HR by businesses across the globe (39 % by the end of 2025), the AI Act addresses risks by introducing rules that help make its use more transparent and accountable.
Under the AI Act:
As for the Viennese candidate, here’s what went wrong during the AI interview process:
Only about one in four companies had begun to prepare for the EU AI Act’s strict requirements for high-risk AI systems. As AI becomes increasingly common in recruitment, it is therefore important to remember that you have the right to:
In an increasingly AI-driven labour market, EURES continues to offer human support through its network of trained advisers, who can provide information and guidance on practical, legal and administrative matters related to living and working across Europe.
In the meantime, online interviews are here to stay, so gear up for that final step by reading up on some tips for tackling remote interviews.
Related links
‘Daily Austrian News’ Instagram post
AI Hiring Tools at Risk: 6 Critical EU AI Act Compliance Steps Every HR Leader Must Take (2026)
The new ‘rules’ of the remote interview
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An August 2026 report on remote work destinations in Europe found that Palencia, Spain, is the best small town for digital nomads. A new study by the digital entertainment platform BC Game reveals the top 10 hidden gems where remote workers can spend this summer.
The research examined 20 European towns with smaller populations to find which ones work best for remote workers. The report looked at factors like average Internet speeds, monthly rent for a one-bedroom city center apartment, and personal safety ratings. It also considered the number of cafes and coworking spaces, coffee prices, and the cost of a meal at an inexpensive restaurant. Each town received a final score out of 100, with higher scores meaning that the city is more suited for digital nomads.
Here's a look at the top 10 European small towns for remote workers:
| City | Country | Safety Index | Average Broadband Download Speed (Mbps) | Monthly Rent (1 Bedroom/City Centre) | Coffee |
| Palencia | Spain | 94 | 267 | $698 | $1.8 |
| Soria | Spain | 87 | 277 | $582 | $2.2 |
| Vaduz | Liechtenstein | 92 | 286 | $1,427 | $6.7 |
| Le Havre | France | 43 | 312 | $524 | $2.7 |
| Angers | France | 61 | 257 | $664 | $2.8 |
| Akureyri | Iceland | 80 | 279 | $1,783 | $4.9 |
| Reims | France | 45 | 288 | $705 | $3.7 |
| Dijon | France | 47 | 271 | $646 | $3.9 |
| Tartu | Estonia | 77 | 136 | $659 | $4.2 |
| Matera | Italy | 80 | 87 | $737 | $2.1 |
You can access the complete research findings here.
1. Palencia, Spain
Palencia is the best small town in Europe to work remotely this summer. The destination has a 94/100 safety rating, which matters a lot for anyone arriving in an unfamiliar city for the first time. The Internet is also fast at 267 Mbps, so video calls and file transfers are never going to be an issue. One-bedroom rentals in the city center go for around 700 USD a month, and staying fed and caffeinated while working from a local spot costs very little, with meals under 12 USD and coffee at 1.75 USD.
2. Soria, Spain
Soria is the most affordable hidden gem for remote workers looking to set up a base for a couple of months. Rents here average just 580 USD a month, and Internet speeds reach 277 Mbps, so there's no trade-off on connectivity. The safety score of 87/100 also means it's a comfortable place to be, whether walking home late or leaving a laptop at a cafe table. It's also a small city of around 41K people, quiet and easy to get around, which is exactly what a lot of remote workers are actually looking for.
3. Vaduz, Liechtenstein
Vaduz is for digital nomads who put safety and connectivity above everything else. The city’s safety rating of 91/100 is second only to Palencia, and Internet speeds exceed 285 Mbps, making it one of the best-connected small towns in Europe. The trade-off is cost: rent runs at around 1,440 USD a month, and a coffee is nearly 7 USD, so the daily expenses add up fast. But for anyone earning well and looking for a calm base with fast Internet in the middle of Europe, Vaduz is hard to look past.
4. Le Havre, France
Le Havre has the best Internet of any small town in Europe at 312 Mbps, faster than even the capital, Paris. That alone is a good reason to be here for anyone doing heavy digital work. Rent is also among the cheapest at around 525 USD a month, and a meal at a local restaurant costs under 14 USD. Beyond that, the city has up to 20 cafes and co-working spaces where remote workers can get the job done.
5. Angers, France
Angers rounds out the top five small towns for digital nomads. Typical studios here get listed for under 670 USD a month, while the Internet is fast enough for stand-ups, deadlines, and everything in between, at 257 Mbps. Angers is also quite safe for a city this size, and there are plenty of cafes and coworking spaces (up to 20) to rotate between when working from home gets boring. With around 161K residents, the city also has an active social scene to make longer stays feel less isolating.
The CEO of BC Game commented on the study: "Most remote workers pick their next destination based on photos on Instagram or a Reddit thread someone wrote two years ago. The problem is that those places are usually packed by the time you get there, and the rent has gone up. The smarter move is to look one step outside the obvious choices. If everyone is going to Lisbon, look at a smaller Portuguese city like Faro. If Madrid is getting expensive, look at a town two hours away. The infrastructure is usually the same, the costs are lower, and you actually get to feel like you live somewhere rather than just being another nomad in a queue for a coworking desk."
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