The pandemic threatens to exacerbate gender inequalities and reinforce the association between women and unpaid care—unless contrary action is taken. The pandemic has exposed the underlying and deeply-rooted inequalities between genders which have persisted despite decades-long legislative efforts... Find out more

On 5 May 2021, US President Joe Biden surprised the world by advocating a waiver of intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines. “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures”, stated US Trade Representative... Find out more

The EU’s ‘Fitfor55’ package No, ‘Fitfor55’ is not a new fitness programme for 55-year old people, but EU newspeak for a package of legislative proposals to implement the recently adopted promise by the member states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared to... Find out more

Trade union reactions at the European level Climate Law On the 21st of April 2021, the European Parliament and the European Council reached a provisional agreement on the EU climate law making the EU target of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 irreversible and legally binding (at EU level). The... Find out more

Take a few minutes to look at Time Magazine's cover of April 26/ May 3, created by the artist Red Hong Yi. How do you feel? What kind of emotion do you experience? What does this cover tell you about our relationship to ourselves, others, and our natural environment? Scientific data or the cognitive... Find out more

With 'climate emergency' having been recognised as a global concern and climate and environmental policy objectives are on the top of policy agendas, 'green finance' or 'sustainable finance' has also gained more and more importance in the last couple of years, both in terms of policy-making and in... Find out more

In April the ETUI held a workshop exploring the interfaces between labour and environmental law, which brought together legal experts from both fields. These two fields of law and scholarship have rarely directly engaged with each other, remaining within distinct silos. Each of them has its own... Find out more

Platform work can be accelerated by the ongoing pandemic, worsening pay and working conditions of the workers, cautions a study into the development of platform work in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden). In the Nordic economies, platform companies have established... Find out more

Austria - Collective agreement for museum employees After years of unsuccessful demands, a joint collective agreement was reached for the 2,600 federal museum employees. The long-standing initiative by the works councils and the public service union (GÖD), placing pressure on the state, finally bore... Find out more

The eyes of all those concerned with social Europe are now on the high-level summit at the end of this week (7-8 May) in Porto. The Portuguese Presidency is hoping to renew the political and institutional support for the European Pillar of Social Rights, but most of all, to advance its... Find out more