Pension policy is not safe from the potentially dramatic consequences of the pandemic. But in terms of pension politics, the pandemic also represents a window of opportunity to rethink the political debate on the future reform agenda. The present policy brief sheds light on the short- and long-term... Find out more

This issue of the SEER Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Eastern Europe for 2020 focuses on EU-western Balkans relations at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a particular insights to the policy approaches in Croatia and Turkey. In terms of the number of cases per capita, western Balkans... Find out more

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that highly mobile workers who frequently move either within or in and out of the European Union (EU) are irreplaceable during a public health crisis. Nevertheless, they often remain the least protected and most vulnerable. Measures introduced to protect workers in... Find out more

At the end of April 2020, in the EU27 there were more than 42 million applications for support for workers on short-time work or similar schemes, which corresponds to about one quarter of the overall EU workforce. With its proposed SURE programme to provide financial support to national short-time... Find out more

Contact-tracing apps to combat the Covid-19 pandemic have increasingly been mentioned as useful tools to accompany and contribute to a return to normality despite the many ethical and legal questions they raise. The pressure exerted by business circles and lobbies to restart and ‘save the economy’... Find out more

This policy brief considers the lack of European Works Councils through a Belgian perspective. It discusses Belgian companies who are currently engaged in establishing one or have developed ‘functionally equivalent’ structures. The remaining companies are confronted with serious obstacles to... Find out more

The proposed EU company law package, which was published in April 2018 by the European Commission, seeks to encourage cross-border company mobility while at the same time protecting stakeholder interests. The ETUI’s GOODCORP network of company law experts has identified three areas where the package... Find out more

This policy brief discusses how social media can help renew trade union collective action and strengthen the labour movement’s capacity to mobilise. It demonstrates how social media can strengthen campaigning activities by examining two recent union-led campaigns in the United States: ‘OUR Walmart’... Find out more

The 2017 revised Shareholder Rights Directive gives shareholders a say on executive pay and requires institutional investors to improve shareholder engagement. The directive is thus designed to provide a counterweight to the increasingly dominant ‘shareholder’ model of corporate governance which has... Find out more

This policy brief examines the effectiveness of policies which aim to dismiss labour market institutions, in the name of competitiveness, across the European Union (EU). It also assesses the evidence which supports a positive relationship between deregulation and decentralization and productivity... Find out more