Europe “rediscovers” remote work. Again. And still treats it like a backup plan.
Energy crisis on the horizon? Work from home. But only for now, please.
There is a pattern in how Europe talks about remote work, and once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore.
Every time a crisis emerges—whether it is a pandemic, an energy shock, or a logistical disruption—remote work suddenly becomes not only acceptable, but desirable. It is presented as a practical, immediate, almost obvious solution. This time is no different.
Faced with the risk of prolonged energy supply disruptions, European institutions are once again encouraging people to work from home up to three days a week. The reasoning is straightforward: fewer commutes mean lower fuel consumption, and the numbers supporting this argument are solid.
But the real issue is not whether it works. It clearly does.
The issue is how it is framed.
Remote work continues to be treated as a contingency measure—a temporary adjustment to extraordinary circumstances—rather than as a structural shift in how work can and should be organized. It is, effectively, the “low power mode” of modern work: something you switch on when needed, and switch off as soon as normality returns.
Except, for millions of people, this is no longer a temporary setting.
Over the past few years, a growing number of professionals have reorganised their lives around remote work. Not because they were forced to, but because they realised it offered something fundamentally better: more control over time, fewer unnecessary constraints, and the ability to choose where to live rather than where to commute.
This is where the disconnect becomes evident.
Institutions continue to assume that work has a natural “default state”—centralised, office-based, geographically fixed—and that remote work is a deviation from that norm. But for a significant and growing segment of the workforce, the opposite is now true.
Remote work is not the exception. It is the upgrade.
Treating it as a temporary fix does not just underestimate its potential. It actively prevents organisations and policymakers from fully understanding what it can unlock, both in terms of productivity and quality of life.
And perhaps most importantly, it reveals a deeper hesitation: the reluctance to accept that the future of work is not something we revert to after a crisis, but something we build through it.