European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

Description

The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) is a tripartite European Union Agency, whose role is to provide knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment and work-related policies.

Eurofound provides information, advice and expertise on working conditions and sustainable work, industrial relations, labour market change and quality, and life and public services, to support the EU Institutions and bodies, Member States and Social Partners in shaping and implementing social and employment policies, as well as promoting social dialogue on the basis of comparative information, research and analysis. In addition, Eurofound addresses the policy challenges in two transversal thematic activities, such as anticipating and managing the impact of change and promoting social cohesion and convergence.

Eurofound's three regularly repeated pan-European surveys contribute to the work in the strategic areas. These are the European Company Survey (ECS), European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) and European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). Eurofound’s surveys collect original and fully comparable data covering all EU Member States and a range of other countries. In April 2020, the Agency kick-started a unique and large-scale e-survey, Living, working and COVID-19, to capture the far-reaching implications of the pandemic for the way people live and work across the EU. Moreover, Eurofound has at its disposal a network of national correspondents, based in all Member States plus Norway. Eurofound's EU PolicyWatch collates information on the responses of government and social partners to the COVID-19 crisis, the war in Ukraine, rising inflation, as well as gathering examples of company practices aimed at mitigating the social and economic impacts.

Key activities within climate change and health

Eurofound’s priorities are shaped by the key challenges for social cohesion and just transitions in a changing environment in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis.

To support the EU’s transition to a climate-resilient and carbon-neutral economy. These include employment shifts and the transformation of jobs and working conditions, as well as the social impact of just transitions and the distributional impact of climate change policies.
To examine the distributional impacts of climate change policies and measures to ensure social justice will provide knowledge to help implement the Just Transition Fund.
To investigate the long-term impacts of the pandemic on living conditions and the world of work, with an immediate focus on how the lockdowns have changed the labour market, how digitisation has changed the workplace, how COVID-19 has impacted business continuity.