It's no major hassle - you email a invoice once a month, add a line to a spreadsheet, and hire a English-speaking local accountant to do the filings (in Spain this costs ~€30 a month). In many cases you save money overall, since coworking, laptops, software tools and relevant SaaS subscriptions you might've paid for yourself are now all deductible business expenses (i.e. you pay 50+% less, after typical income tax + VAT).

The practical day to day is identical, since most remote-focused companies I've talked to have a standard policy of benefits (standard working hours, paid holiday, minimum notice periods, etc) for their remote freelancers abroad and for their local employees (notably though you can't be a freelancer locally in many countries, as it's considered disguised employment - employee if the company has a local presence, contractor otherwise). Of course, that's only true for companies who are comfortable with remote work, which ime is common for software dev & startups but rare elsewhere.

Your mileage may vary, but for me and many people I know across Europe it's an easy fix that's no big problem.

That has also applied to those in USA not doing foreign nomad thing. In USA, an LLC keeps things tidy for the business expenses including conference travel.

I think that's what these residency permits and visas are designed to change. It specifies non-EU remote workers (read: Canadians and Americans) What you're describing sounds like it would likely apply to EU residents only - as a way of mitigating the complete free transfer of movement/labor it allows.

Disclaimer: I work for Remote

can anyone find actual laws to the contrary and evidence that they do not violate EU-law? a quick search by myself turned up nothing.

cross-border employment has been common for decades, so such a limitation would be very surprising.

what is possible is that employers may shy away from the resulting complexity because the employee needs to pay taxes in his country of residence, and not that of the employer.