Dublin Castle, 14-15 February 2013
The Foundation Forum, which takes place every four years in Dublin, is Eurofound’s ‘flagship’ event. It is designed to provide a high-level forum for debate and discussion of key social policy issues facing Member States. The Forum brings together leading decision-makers and opinion-formers, together with academic experts, in a neutral setting to promote the exchange of new ideas and experiences on subjects of policy relevance and within the Foundation’s competence.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Robert Anderson is Head of the Living Conditions and Quality of Life Unit at Eurofound, where he has worked since 1988. He studied Human Sciences at Oxford University, and Sociology as Applied to Medicine at Bedford College, London. Prior to joining Eurofound, he worked as Programme Manager at the World Health Organization European Office in Copenhagen, with responsibility for the European Regional Programme in Health Promotion. Earlier positions include Senior Research Officer at the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care in London and consultant in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Konstanz. Mr Anderson is the current President of Eurocarers, the European carers’ association, which aims to advance the issue of informal care at both national and EU levels. His current research activities include monitoring the quality of life in Europe, particularly analysing data from the third European Quality of Life Survey.
László Andor was appointed EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion in February 2010. Between 2005 and 2010 he represented Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia on the Board of Directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor at Corvinus University and King Sigismund College in Budapest, an editor of journals, and adviser to the Hungarian Prime Minister. A Hungarian national, Mr Andor graduated from the University of Economic Sciences in Budapest in 1989, studied at George Washington University, Washington DC, and in 1993 earned a Master’s degree in Development Economics at the University of Manchester on a British Council Fellowship. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Leszek Balcerowicz is Professor of Economics and Head of the Department of International Comparative Studies at Warsaw School of Economics (WSE). He is a former President of the National Bank of Poland and Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Republic of Poland. A graduate in Foreign Trade from the Central School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw (now WSE), he received an MBA from St. John’s University, New York and a doctorate from WSE. In 2005, he was awarded Poland’s highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, for his contribution to Poland’s economic transformation – a ‘shock therapy’ commonly referred to as the ‘Balcerowicz Plan’. He is a member of the Group of Thirty, of the European Systemic Risk Board and Honorary Chair of the economic think tank Bruegel.
Joan Burton was appointed Ireland’s Minister for Social Protection in March 2011. Her main priority is to transform the system of social protection to encourage unemployed people back to work, education or training. One of her key initiatives is the launch of JobBridge, an internship programme, which enables the unemployed to obtain quality work experience. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and a former Finance spokesman for the party, Joan Burton was first elected to the Dáil in 1992. In the 1992–97 Government she held the posts of Minister of State in Social Welfare and Minister of State for Development Cooperation and Overseas Aid. A chartered accountant by profession, she trained and worked with PriceWaterhouse in Dublin prior to becoming a Senior Lecturer in the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Jerzy Ciechanski has been Chair of Eurofound’s Governing Board since October 2012. In his native Poland, he is Counsellor to the Minister for Labour and Social Policy. His main areas of responsibility are EU social policy (he is Deputy Chair of the EU Social Protection Committee), cooperation on employment, social policy and social rights issues with the Council of Europe (Committee for Social Cohesion where he represents Poland and which he chaired for two consecutive terms) and the UN (Commission for Social Development and the Human Rights Council). He is currently also pursuing an academic career at the Warsaw University Institute of International Relations. He holds a law degree from Warsaw University and a PhD in political science from Northern Illinois University.
Emer Costello has been a Member of the European Parliament (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats) since February 2012 and currently chairs the Delegation for relations with the Palestinian Legislative Council. A member of the Labour Party in Ireland, she was a member of Dublin City Council (Labour Party) from 2003 to 2012, and Lord Mayor of Dublin from 2009–10. Educated at Dundalk Institute of Technology and University College Dublin, from which she obtained a BA and Higher Diploma in Education, she was first elected to Dublin City Council as a member for the North Inner City area in 2004 and was re-elected in June 2009. Up to 2007, she worked for 10 years as Programme Manager of the Education Service, Léargas, the Irish National Agency for European cooperation programmes in the areas of education, training and youth.
Lucinda Creighton was appointed Minister of State for European Affairs in March 2011. In her current role, she accompanies the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Foreign Affairs and External Relations Council meetings and represents Ireland at meetings and conferences of international organisations. A graduate in law from Trinity College Dublin, she qualified as a barrister in 2007. She was first elected to the Dáil in May 2007 and appointed Spokesperson on European Affairs in October 2007. She served as a member of Dublin City Council from 2004 to 2007. Elected Vice-President of the European People’s Party in October 2012, she is also a Member of the European People’s Party Young Members Network.
Anna Diamantopoulou is a former Greek Government Minister and former European Commissioner. A Civil Engineer by profession, she carried out graduate studies in regional development. In 1999 she was appointed European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (1999–2004). Anna Diamantopoulou is active in European affairs. She is a Presidium Member of Friends of Europe, the Brussels-based think tank exploring ideas on the future of the EU, and a Steering Committee Member of Notre Europe–Jaques Delors Institute, the Paris-based organisation dedicated to European integration and unity. She has also served as Chair of the Party of European Socialists’ Forum on the European Dimension of New Social Europe. She has just completed her term as a Fisher Family Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, teaching a study group on European issues.
Francisco H. G. Ferreira is a Lead Economist at the World Bank’s Research Department and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn). In the World Bank he previously worked as Deputy Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, and as a co-Director of the World Development Report 2006 on Equity and Development. He has published widely in the fi elds of poverty, inequality, and the political economy of development, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Inequality, the Review of Income and Wealth, the World Bank Economic Review and the Economic Analysis Review. Between 1999 and 2002, he was Assistant Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics.
David Foden is Head of the Working Conditions and Industrial Relations Unit at Eurofound. After studying economics at Cambridge University, Mr Foden worked from 1979 to 1985 in the Economic Department of the Trades Union Congress. The role included policy development on economic and industrial policy and providing information to support trade union negotiators in collective bargaining. In 1985 he moved to the European Trade Union Institute in Brussels as Research Officer and subsequently coordinator of the research unit on employment and labour market policies and social protection. He joined Eurofound in 2002 as a Research Manager in the Industrial Relations Team and was responsible for the development of the fi rst European Company Survey. He was Head of the Observatories Unit prior to taking up his current role at the beginning of 2012.
Eamon Gilmore is Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade in the Irish government. He is also Leader of the Labour Party, a position he has occupied since September 2007, prior to which he was Labour Party spokesperson on Environment, Housing and Local Government (2002–2007). From January 2005 to June 2007, he was a Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In an earlier coalition government, he was Minister of State at the Department of the Marine (1994–1997). He holds a BA in Psychology from NUI Galway and was formerly a trade union organiser. He was first elected to the Dáil (parliament) in 1989 for the constituency of Dún Laoghaire. He has been re-elected at every subsequent general election.
Megan Greene is Chief Economist at Maverick Intelligence, offering advisory services based on political, policy and macroeconomic developments to clients in government and the fi nancial services sector. Previously, Ms Greene was Director of European Economic Research at Roubini Global Economics. She began covering Greece, Ireland, Italy and Germany at the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2007, before the eurozone crisis had erupted. She is a graduate of Princeton University and of Nuffi eld College, Oxford University and earlier worked at JP Morgan Chase and as an adviser to the Liechtenstein royal family on financial regulation. Ms Greene divides her time between Europe and the US. She writes a weekly column with Bloomberg and her work regularly appears in both print and broadcast media.
Renate Hornung-Draus is Managing Director, European and International Affairs at the Confederation of German Employers – BDA, where her role is to represent the employers’ views vis-à-vis the European institutions and international organisations. She also provides advice and services to member organisations and companies on European and international issues. A graduate in Economics from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany), Ms Hornung-Draus was previously Director of Social Affairs at BusinessEurope (1992-1994) and Vice-Chair (1996–2006) of the Employers’ group of the European Economic and Social Committee. Currently she is Chair of BusinessEurope’s Social Affairs Committee, Vice-President of the International Organisation of Employers and Vice-Chair (employers) of the International Labour Organization’s governing body subcommittee on multinational enterprises.
Agnès Hubert has been an Adviser in the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) since 2005. A graduate in economics and political science of the University of Paris I, she has previously held posts in development and cooperation (international commodity agreements), information and communication (Information Europe – Third World) and social and employment policy (Head of the Equal Opportunities Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs). In 2000, she worked on the Commission’s White Paper on European Governance and was then seconded for two years to the European Parliament. In BEPA, she has contributed to a number of projects in the societal field, her specific expertise lying in the fields of gender, social and employment policy and fundamental rights.
Kimberley Lansford is Senior Policy Adviser at the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) responsible for issues related to education and labour market reform, societal changes, energy, industrial raw materials and environmental issues such as climate change. She is also involved in two education initiatives: the European Coordinating Body on maths, science and technology (inGenious) and the Global Enterprise Project. She is currently on secondment from Renault SAS in Paris. Her background is in research including energy strategy, social economic evolution, and coordination of international partnerships among companies and universities.
Bob Lee is Communications Director with responsibility for Europe, Middle East, and Asia and a senior consultant with the global research, consulting and training firm Great Place to Work (GPTW). As part of this role, he is responsible for representing the company at leading international conferences and events. He is a partner in both GPTW UK and GPTW Ireland, and is a key member of the global senior team and Chairman of the Global Advisory Board. He founded Great Place to Work in Ireland in 2002 and served as CEO until 2010. Before this, he held senior management positions in a number of organisations in Ireland and the UK over a 20-year period. Mr Lee holds an MBA from the UCD Smurfit Business School, writes and lectures extensively, and is a regular conference speaker and media commentator.
Mary McCaughey is Head of Information and Communication in Eurofound, where she has worked since 2003. A graduate in Business and Politics from Trinity College, Dublin and an ‘ancienne’ of the College of Europe, Bruges, she began her career in journalism in Brussels in 1990 with Europe Information Service and the Wall Street Journal Europe. She subsequently contributed to the WSJE and the Irish Times as a features writer before taking up the post of spokesperson with the Delegation of the European Commission to South Africa in 1998, heading up its press and information department. In 2001 she moved to Belgrade, Serbia, where she worked as a communications consultant for the European Agency for Reconstruction.
Juan Menéndez-Valdés was appointed Director of Eurofound in December 2010. Prior to this, he had a varied career ranging from entrepreneur to official in the Institute for Employment of the Spanish government and Senior Manager in the Spanish Employers’ Confederation. His experience and expertise are in the areas of industrial relations, labour market and employment policies, migration, and education and training. He also has a broad tripartite experience at national, EU and international level. He has been a member of a number of EU Committees and other international institutions. From 2007–2009, he was Chair of the Governing Board of the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), Eurofound’s sister agency.
Erika Mezger has been Deputy Director of Eurofound since July 2009. A graduate in public administration from the University of Konstanz, Germany, where she obtained a PhD in 1989, she has had a long association with both trade unionism and research into employment and social issues. Ms Mezger began her career at the Hans Böckler Foundation in Düsseldorf in 1987, where she carried out research on gender issues, the welfare state and modern governance, and active labour market policies. She gained international
experience while studying in the US in 1991 and 1998, under the German Marshall Fund ‘Young Leaders’ Programme’ in Washington DC and New York and as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University. Prior to taking up her appointment in Eurofound, Ms Mezger was Head of the Research Promotion Department at the Hans Böckler Foundation.
Staffan Nilsson is President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the EU’s only non-political advisory body. Based in Brussels, the EESC enables civil society organisations across Europe to take part in the EU policy and decision-making process. Since 1995, when he became a member of the EESC, he has actively brought his expertise to bear on the work of the EESC, mainly in the fields of agriculture, sustainable development and international cooperation. Mr Nilsson coordinated the EESC’s work on the Lisbon Strategy and later on the Europe 2020 strategy. He has been a farmer in northern Sweden for more than 30 years and a long-standing leader in the Swedish Farmers’ Federation (LRF) and in other associations in the field of education and culture, development and aid. He is a graduate of the University of Gothenburg, in Nordic Languages and History of Literature.
Olivia O’Leary is an Irish journalist, writer and current affairs presenter. She has presented television and radio programmes over the years for both RTE and the BBC including BBC’s Newsnight and RTE’s Prime Time. She has presented the Sony award-winning Between Ourselves discussion programme for BBC Radio 4, and the recent One to One interview series. She does a weekly political column for RTE Radio 1’s Drivetime. Two collections of her radio columns have been published by O’Brien Press.
Monika Queisser is Head of Social Policy at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A leading international expert in pension system analysis and pension reform, she has been working with governments in OECD countries since 1999, advising them on pension system design and pension reform strategies. From 2007–8, she worked as an adviser to the OECD Secretary-General. Prior to joining the OECD, Ms Queisser worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, where she worked with governments in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe on pension and insurance matters. Her first employment was with the German Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich and she also worked as a journalist for daily newspapers and in broadcasting in Germany. Ms Queisser holds two masters degrees (in Economics and Political Science) and a doctorate in Economic Policy from the University of Munich.
Matthew Robinson is a Managing Director at Accenture, the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Since 2007 he has led policy research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, the company’s macroeconomic, geopolitical and business think tank. His current areas of interest include new drivers of economic growth, tri-sector collaboration, open business models and corporate agility. Recent studies include New Waves of Growth, Turning the Tide and Fast Forward to Growth. He was previously a consultant in Accenture’s strategy practice. Prior to Accenture, he was an adviser to a UK Member of Parliament. Mr Robinson holds an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. He lives and works in London.
Guy Ryder is Director-General of the International Labour Organization and a former General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (2006–2010). Mr Ryder has some 30 years of experience in the world of work, most of it at international level. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Liverpool, he started his professional career in 1981 as assistant at the International Department of the Trades Union Congress in London. In 1988, Mr Ryder became Assistant Director and – from 1993 - Director of the Geneva office of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). He first joined the ILO in 1998 as Director of the Bureau for workers’ activities. During his time at the ILO, the decent work agenda was launched and won support from the international community. In 2002, Guy Ryder was appointed General Secretary of the ICFTU, and in 2006 was elected first General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Günther Schmid is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at the Free University Berlin and Director Emeritus at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). His expertise, focused on labour market policy and employment, is reflected in many books and articles, including the International Handbook for Labour Market Policy and Evaluation (1996) and the monograph Full Employment in Europe – Managing Labour Market Transitions and Risks (2008). He has also been a member of various committees at OECD or EU level, notably the Committee under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder which in 2002 was tasked with preparing the German labour market reforms (Hartz Commission). He holds degrees in Political Science and Economics, and he was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the Universities Aalborg (Denmark) and Linnaeus (Sweden).
Bernadette Ségol has been Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) since the Athens Congress in May 2011. Over a period of 10 years, from 2000 to 2010, she was the Head of UNI Europa, the European trade union federation for services and communication. Ms Ségol has played a significant role in the creation of more than 200 European Works Councils and has contributed to the overhaul of the Services Directive (2003–2006). She has worked for legislation on temporary agency work, using the dialogue established with employers to achieve a better legislative framework within the European Union. She is particularly committed to strengthening the affiliated trade unions from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and from candidate countries in a bid to facilitate their involvement in European trade union work. One of her main focuses is wage equality in Europe.
Armindo Silva is Director for Employment and Social Legislation, Social Dialogue in the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) of the European Commission. He started his career in the European Commission in 1988, in the DG for Industrial Affairs (now DG Enterprise). Since 1994, he has held several management posts in DG EMPL in the areas of employment policy, social protection, social inclusion and labour law. Mr Silva was born in Lisbon and holds a degree in Economics from the Instituto Superior de Economia (University of Lisbon), an MA in Contemporary European Studies and a PhD in Economics from the University of Reading.
Andrew Simms founded the climate change, energy and interdependence programmes at independent UK think tank New Economics Foundation (NEF). Described by New Scientist magazine as ‘a master at joined-up progressive thinking’, he was co-author of the groundbreaking Green New Deal report and co-founded the Green New Deal group. Until the end of 2010, he was Policy Director at NEF. Mr Simms is on the boards of Greenpeace UK, the climate campaign 10:10 and the Energy and Resources Institute Europe. He worked for many years for international development organisations, writing extensively on issues of climate change and poverty reduction. His latest book (with David Boyle) is Eminent Corporations: the Rise and Fall of the Great British Corporation (2010).
Donald Storrie is Head of the Employment and Change Unit at Eurofound. Born in Northern Ireland, he studied and worked in Sweden for 28 years prior to taking up a Research Manager post at Eurofound in 2005. He holds a BSc in Mathematics and a PhD in Economics from the University of Gothenburg. Earlier he worked at the Swedish Institute for Social Research and the Ministry of Labour (both in Stockholm), Ostfold University (Norway) and subsequently was Director of the Centre for Labour Market Studies in Gothenburg. His publications include research on the individual consequences of job loss, temporary employment, the evaluation of active labour market policy and geographical mobility.
Raymond Torres is Director of the International Institute for Labour Studies at the International Labour Organization. He is editor of the World of Work Report, the annual flagship publication from the Institute. Before that, Mr Torres was Head of the OECD Employment Analysis and Policy Division. He was Editor of the OECD Employment Outlook and in charge of the reassessment of the OECD Jobs Strategy. He has authored several studies on labour markets, international trade, economic growth and core workers’ rights and is Policy Fellow at the IZA Research Institute and lecturer at the University of Geneva.
Frank Vandenbroucke is Professor at the KU Leuven Faculty of Economics and Business. He studied economics in Leuven and Cambridge, UK, and received his DPhil in Oxford. He was Minister for Social Security, Health Insurance, Pensions and Employment in the Belgian Federal Government (1999–2004) and Minister for Education and Employment in the Flemish Regional Government (2004–2009). He was appointed Minister van Staat (an honorary title) in December 2009. He also teaches at the Universities of Antwerp, where he holds the Herman Deleeck chair, and the University of Amsterdam, where he holds the Joop den Uyl chair. His research focuses on the impact of the EU on the development of social and employment policy in EU Member States.
Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research on the social determinants of health and on the societal effects of income inequality. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology. He is Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London and a Visiting Professor at the University of York. Mr Wilkinson co-wrote The Spirit Level with Kate Pickett which won the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. He is also a co-founder of The Equality Trust.