EURES (EURopean Employment Services) is a cooperation network for employment and free movement of workers. The objective of the EURES network is to provide services to workers, employers and all citizens who wish to benefit from the principle of free movement of persons by providing information and advice on job vacancies and applications, on the situation and developments on the labour market and on living and working conditions in each country.

After announcing that it had started working on the RemotEU project, EURES contacted us to share its experience in dealing with companies and workers and the questions it has been receiving for months about the possibility of teleworking from one country for a company located in another.

The meeting was very interesting and allowed us to identify the problems of promoting telework in Europe. These problems are described in detail below:

• Definition of telework conditions: telework is often not defined in time and form by the company and the teleworker. Time influences the regulations to be applied. For example, it is not the same for a person to telework from another country for 30 days a year or indefinitely.
• Definition of the telecommuting model: the concepts of posted or cross-border workers are recognised in Europe, but there are others, such as the digital nomad or the self-employed, whose regulation is not unified in Europe.
• Lack of international legislation: there is no European legislation addressing these issues. The applicable legislation is that contained in bilateral or multilateral agreements signed between states, although in some cases such agreements do not exist. EURES notes that it has encountered cases where citizens have asked in two countries how to pay taxes and have been told by each tax office that they must pay taxes in their own system.
• Regulations for the definition of Tax Residence: the 183-day rule is normally used, but this criterion is more difficult to justify in the case of teleworking. There are also other criteria, such as economic interests, which can be used by the administration to establish tax obligations.
• Difficulties for companies organising telework from another country: the lack of a common set of rules applies to both teleworkers and companies. Companies organising telework for an employee from a country other than that of the company must be aware of the other country's regulations and comply with the tax obligations arising from teleworking. To have an employee in another country, in most cases the company will have to establish itself in that country.