As another European I concur. Moreover I'm British but I left to live in "continental Europe" over a decade ago, so I've seen some of the Anglo, Anglo-Saxon and

As another European I concur. Moreover I'm British but I left to live in "continental Europe" over a decade ago, so I've seen some of the Anglo, Anglo-Saxon and the southern European models. When I worked in the UK, many businesses had a work environment that steered towards the US model, but 9am - 5:30pm was the norm. More flexible working hours are starting to be more common, but statistically the total hours worked is very static over the last decade. [1] On the other hand, here in Germany the concept of "Feierabend" is sacrosanct. Feierabend is the word Germans use to describe the time after work (and the point at which they "clock off"). Germans start work earlier than in the UK, but many finish around 4:30pm or even earlier on a Friday. That being said, the productive hours of work here in Germany appears to be different (possibly just observer bias). They seem to get a lot done in those hours. I see less meetings and less general chit-chat throughout the day. In the UK I would often experience the collection of people around the coffee machine discussing last night's TV programs. I've never seen that kind of thing here. Spain was a completely different experience. People didn't appear to work so much, but that was simply because initially I didn't realise that many people have two jobs, with siesta parked in the middle. They often start earlier and finish late in the evening. The statistics show that Spain (and Greece more so) have a higher number of hours worked annually than Germany (and the UK). From an economic perspective though, those extra hours haven't traditionally produced growth in the same way as the Germans have. That's not to say that the Germans are particularly more productive (I think that is rather hard to quantify and there are many more factors in play than just being "productive"), but in terms of pure economic success, Spain and Greece are certainly well behind their northern European partners. A lot of that is also due to the kind of economies these countries have though. Germany produces things for export and benefits greatly from a depressed Euro and has done so for the last 15 years. Spain and Greece do not have such economies, and have been hit with the triple punch of economic depression, reduced EU financial support and forced austerity. It is like taking a heroin addict (EU grant money) and forcing him to go cold turkey, but also removing all the furniture in the room and leaving him with a cold concrete floor and walls and leaving one barred window that overlooks a methadone clinic day centre. [1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS