(ANSA) - TARVISIO, OCT 5 - Mobility, work-life balance, and working from home. These are among the main challenges facing the labor market in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Carinthia (Austria). "This region has seen a steady increase in cross-border workers over the years—especially from the mountainous areas of Friuli-Venezia Giulia heading to Carinthia—and this trend particularly affects the technology-intensive manufacturing sector, research and development, and the tourism sector," as specified by Mariateresa Bazzaro, president of the FVG-Carinthia Interregional Trade Union Council. The picture was painted today in Tarvisio, at the 30th anniversary celebration of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia-Carinthia Interregional Trade Union Council, which brings together the main Italian trade unions in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (CGIL, CISL, and UIL) and in Carinthia (ÖGB). Commuting between Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Carinthia—and vice versa—particularly along the Udine-Villacco route, is a crucial issue that has a massive impact on workers' lives and on work-life balance, which, among cross-border workers in this region, is by no means an issue limited to women. Finally, managing remote work among Italian employees and their Austrian colleagues is one of the new challenges posed by cross-border work, within the delicate balance between labor law, social security, and the tax systems of the two countries, and within the framework of the European Framework Agreement on cross-border remote work—which has also been signed by Italy and Austria—as Bazzaro further noted. These challenges emerged during the cross-border monitoring activities carried out by CSI FVG-Carinthia, and it is hoped that they will become the subject of third-level collective bargaining with a view to integrating the labor markets between the two border regions. One of the objectives of the CSI's monitoring activities is to establish an observatory on the cross-border labor market between the two neighboring regions, following the path already laid out by the EURADRIA project on the Italian-Slovenian side, which could thus make Friuli Venezia Giulia a model for Europe. (ANSA).