200 research outputs found
Labour Market and Social Policy. CEPS Policy Priorities for 2019-2024, 4 October 2019
The mega-trends of digitalisation and automation have already changed labour markets
and value chains around the world, with their inevitable economic and social
consequences. And the pace of change is accelerating; job markets and skills
requirements are evolving faster than traditional labour market practices and institutions. But
what exactly are these changes, and how will governments, industry leaders, social partners
and workers react to them
The Great Recession’s Biggest Losers: The euro area’s jobless. CEPS Policy Insights No 2017-29/July 2017
The euro area continues to recover from the Great Recession, with several recent
publications offering optimistic assessments of the euro area’s economic performance.
The European Commission’s “Employment and Social Developments in Europe 2017”
report, for example, praises moderate economic growth and “solid net job creation” in a
“job-rich recovery”. While the European Commission acknowledged ongoing challenges
such as youth unemployment, it must also be recognised that the euro area’s recovery
has been piecemeal. Economic growth is encouraging, but it obscures the unemployed
millions who have not tasted the fruits of the recovery. The euro area’s labour market,
while posting gains, remains in a worse state than before the Great Recession. Nearly half
of the unemployed in the euro area have been jobless for over a year. In contrast with
the United States, Japan and other regions hit hard by the crisis, the euro area’s labour
market exemplifies the most enduring damage of the Great Recession. European
lawmakers need to soberly acknowledge the job market’s failures and take targeted
action, addressing the regions and demographics for whom the recovery is not working
Employment and Working Conditions of Selected Types of Platform Work
Platform work is a form of employment that uses an online platform to match the supply of and demand for paid labour. In Europe, platform work is still small in scale but is rapidly developing. The types of work offered through platforms are ever-increasing, as are the challenges for existing regulatory frameworks.
This report explores the working and employment conditions of three of the most common types of platform work in Europe. For each of these types, Eurofound assesses the physical and social environment, autonomy, employment status and access to social protection, and earnings and taxation based on interviews with platform workers. A comparative analysis of the regulatory frameworks applying to platform work in 18 EU Member States accompanies this review. This looks into workers’ employment status, the formal relationships between clients, workers and platforms, and the organisation and representation of workers and platforms
What is happening with platform workers’ rights? Lessons from Belgium. CEPS Commentary, 31 October 2017
The partnership between delivery platform Deliveroo and workers’ cooperative SMart has been
terminated, sparking new debate over workers’ rights in the platform economy
Government Responses to the Platform Economy: Where do we stand? CEPS Policy Insight No 2017-30/July 2017
The introduction of the platform economy in Europe has sparked debate on the challenges it raises
for workers, companies, social partners, governments and other stakeholders, and how these
challenges can be addressed. This paper assesses government responses to the platform economy
in seven EU countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain. It shows
that, owing to the lack of a specific framework governing the platform economy, countries generally
attempt to apply existing legislation, regulations and policies to the new challenges that the
platform economy brings. This holds for the status of workers, working conditions, and industrial
relations and social dialogue. Nevertheless, this strategy is not necessarily successful. The status of
platform workers, for example, remains unclear in most member states. Some member states
consider all platform workers to be self-employed, while in other member states, their status is
much more dependent on the specific circumstances. There seems to be little debate on the idea
of introducing a new status in the countries studied. On working conditions, the results confirm
that most countries have applied the existing framework to platform work. In many of the member
states, this has turned out to be problematic in several dimensions (e.g. taxation and social
protection). In the area of industrial relations and social dialogue, there is much less evidence of
specific actions or initiatives
Blame it on my youth! Policy recommendations for re-evaluating and reducing youth unemployment. CEPS Research Report No. 2018/01, January 2018
Youth unemployment has ranked high on the agenda of European policymakers since the onset
of the crisis. Ten years later, youth unemployment remains stubbornly high in a number of
member states. This paper offers policy recommendations for rethinking and reducing youth
unemployment in Europe. To this end, it filters and summarises the results of the STYLE
research project on youth unemployment in Europe, and supplements these with additional
literature. The paper explores three sets of questions: i) How to define and measure youth
employment? ii) What are its causes and effects? and iii) What can be done about the
phenomenon? The findings indicate that youth unemployment is poorly understood and the
most common measurements are insufficient. Its causes are diverse, arising from both the
inherent disadvantages suffered by younger people in the labour market as well as from
structural changes occurring in the labour market. The effects of youth unemployment are
detrimental and significant at both the societal and individual level. Based on our analysis, we
put forward 13 broad policy recommendations to address youth unemployment in Europe
The Platform Economy and Industrial Relations. Applying the old framework to the new reality. CEPS Research Report No. 2017/12, August 2017
This paper investigates the relationship between the platform economy, industrial relations and
social dialogue, as portrayed in the literature. It provides strong evidence that workers in the
platform economy are organising into new employee associations (unions) and are also being
brought into existing employees associations. None of the evidence surveyed indicates that
platforms are organising into employer associations or being incorporated into existing employer
associations. Anecdotal evidence suggests that actors in the platform economy are engaging in
tripartite dialogue. The authors conclude that i) no overarching framework exists for governing or
facilitating social dialogue between the parties involved in the platform economy, and ii) even if the
existing framework is applied to parties in the platform economy, it offers a poor fit due to
differences between platform workers and employees, and platforms and employers
The Future of EU ATM Markets. Impacts of digitalisation and pricing policies on business models. CEPS Research Report, October 2018
ATMs constitute a critical component in today’s infrastructure for facilitating cash payments. However, ongoing digitalisation (cashless payments, e-commerce and online banking) is challenging the role of ATMs and putting pressure on the cash infrastructure in the EU. The shift from cash to cashless payments reduces the need for cash withdrawals and the rise of online banking challenges the bank branch as the traditionally most prevalent location for ATMs. Moreover, the introduction of pricing policies might also change the dynamics in EU ATM markets. Transparency and price caps on the so-called dynamic currency conversion (DCC) as well as potential reductions in interchange fees will put pressure on the revenues of certain ATMs.
Against this background, this report assesses the sensitivity of EU ATM markets to ongoing digitalisation and pricing policies. The impact of these developments is assessed across business models in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, which are representative of the ATM markets in all EU member states. Location characteristics are determined and costs and revenues estimated for the 146,821 ATM locations across these eight EU member states in mid-2018
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