The 2019 EU Directive on Work-Life Balance for Parents and Carers1 issued a set of legislativeactions aimed at supporting work-life balance, encouraging equal sharing of informal carebetween parents and increasing women’s participation in the labour market. Actions underthe Directive include continued monitoring of policy outcomes and improved data on leavetake-up and use of flexible work arrangements. However, sufficient data for adequate policyevaluations and routine monitoring are still out-of-reach.The EU COST Action Sustainability@Leave Network brought together leave policy expertsacross academia, government and practice backgrounds for a workshop in May 2025 at theLuxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). Each invited workshop participantbrought experience with data collection, policy evaluation and/or policy translation to thediscussion. In this report, we summarise the presentations and commentary from this uniquegathering of researchers and representatives of key data collection institutions to drawpractical lessons for future policy implementation and evaluation.
Engeman et al. (Sat,) studied this question.