The lockdown and other restrictive measures introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic recession have had a strong impact on labour markets worldwide. As far as the European Union (EU) is concerned, the accelerated fall in total employment was the ‘sharpest decline ever... Find out more

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

This paper analyses the economic policy-making in the first phase of the epidemic in five Central Europe countries, Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, whose economic structure is characterized by strong export orientation. The focus is on the participatory character of the governments... 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