The European Trade Union Institute

The spread of Covid-19 and the ensuing adoption of lockdown measures have had severe consequences for European labour markets. All EU governments quickly made unprecedented economic and social support available to tackle the consequences of the pandemic.

Work-related psychological risks (PSR) pose an ever-growing problem for modern labour. Awareness of the problem and approaches to its legal regulation vary across the EU. Many central and eastern European states still lag behind in addressing the problem in their national legislation.

Labour provisions in trade agreements have been criticised for minimal effectiveness in improving employment conditions. Five recent cases point to some benefits and to the lessons on when and how labour provisions can be effective. 

With sustained and vigorous efforts from trade unions, labour provisions in trade agreements have been of some help to labour movements in some partner countries, but they could do much more if the lessons from recent examples are truly learned.

In view of the formidable challenges ahead related to recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and to the green and digital transitions, the EU social governance toolbox should urgently be strengthened. This paper discusses the conditions for and added value of setting up an EU Social Imbalances Procedure (SIP), which would be a significant step in this direction. It would contribute to ensuring that EU and Member States’ policies are organised (more) consistently with the notion of competitive sustainability; it would also contribute to achieving upward social convergence and reducing inequalities. After identifying normative, functional, technical and political arguments that support the creation of a Social Imbalances Procedure, the paper develops two main options for its operationalisation. 

Pension policy has gone through an intense period of reform over the past few decades. However, further changes are likely to take place in the near future. Major global trends, not only population ageing but also globalisation, technological innovation and climate change, are going to shape socio-economic and labour organisation and influence macroeconomic trends and will thus have an impact on the adequacy and long-term sustainability of pension policy. 

Research shows that performance-related pay is becoming increasingly prevalent across the EU and that it contributes to pay inequalities between men and women. Men are more likely to receive performance-related pay, and in higher amounts, because it tends to be available in larger firms, at the higher end of the wage distribution, for full-time rather than part-time work, and in certain sectors and occupations.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected women disproportionately and is likely to have adverse effects on gender equality. It is essential that efforts to promote gender equality be increased in order to ensure that hard-won progress in this area is not reversed.

As part of this effort, the European Commission should table a proposal on binding pay transparency measures strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women, in accordance with the Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025.

The economic and health crisis triggered by the Covid‑19 pandemic leaves the European Union facing the steepest decline in production and employment since the Second World War, on top of economic fundamentals that are already fragile as a result of the disastrous effects of the double fall associated with the great financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis.

This paper presents some of the key insights from the second wave of the ETUI Internet and Platform Work Survey (ETUI IPWS) conducted in 14 member states of the European Union (EU) in Spring 2021. The use of standard probability sampling allows us to estimate the proportion of internet and platform workers, and to identify their characteristics, in a way that is generalisable to the working age population. We found the prevalence of internet and platform work to be relatively similar in the analysed countries, suggesting a uniform evolution of this type of work across the EU.