This policy brief analyses the recently launched EU plan for strategic investments pointing to several shortcomings that will significantly limit its positive effects. The plan's funding mechanism offers considerably less than is needed, its governance mechanisms will lead to a bias that will favour... Find out more

Flexibility within multinational companies (MNCs) has become increasingly transnational in character. Strategies of inter-firm benchmarking, outsourcing and cross-national or internal ‘coercive comparison’ are increasingly used by MNCs to enhance local performance by placing plants in competition... Find out more

This Policy Brief focuses on how EU occupational health and safety may be affected by the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP). It draws attention to the connections between the TTIP and the REFIT programme which according to the author share a common objective, namely, to place... Find out more

In recent years and more particularly in the wake of the financial crisis, widespread cost-reducing healthcare reforms have been enacted in Europe at national level subject to varying degrees of pressure from the EU. In countries hardest hit by the crisis, these reforms have had detrimental effects... Find out more

The aim of this Policy Brief is to highlight the key issues concerning recognition of skills as embodied in the project Actors, practices and challenges concerning non-formal and informal learning and its validation and proposes ways of developing such validation.In the context of a growing need to... Find out more

This policy brief provides a brief but systematic overview of the different minimum wage regimes currently found in the EU as a basis for formulating some potential contours of a European minimum wage policy. Find out more

This policy brief shows the importance of proper implementation of sanctions for the overall efficiency and implementation of the goals of the EWC Recast Directive. It formulates some concrete policy recommendations for the Commission’s future implementation report on this Directive. Find out more

This policy brief provides evidence that the economic benefits of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been seriously exaggerated. It also provides some ideas for an alternative globalisation agenda which would enshrine higher labour and environmental standards into trade... Find out more

This policy brief demonstrates how the emphasis on the primacy of economic freedoms has negatively affected the application of EU social security rules and the working conditions of posted workers. It also discusses the legal ambiguities accompanying the notion of 'genuine undertakings' and some... Find out more

This Policy Brief looks at changes in work organisation, the ways in which these lead to an individualisation of the work relationship and the negative consequences arising from the contradictions between how workers see their job and how management perceives it. The brief also presents some... Find out more