Annual reports

Eurofound’s fifth annual yearbook, Living and working in Europe, based on the Agency’s research from 2013, describes developments in the EU in the wake of the crisis, focusing on major topic areas including changes in labour markets and employment, efforts to tackle youth unemployment, innovation in workplaces and public trust in institutions. The yearbook is accompanied by the Annual activity report of the Authorising Officer 2013, which is the Agency’s formal reporting on operations, staff and budgets.

The 2013 annual report from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) presents a retrospective of over a decade of measuring the impact of large-scale restructuring activity in Europe. Based on a database containing details of over 16,000 large-scale restructuring events– each generally involving at least 100 job losses or gains – it paints a picture of restructuring trends across the EU Member States. The report sets out to compare activity in the period leading up to the economic and financial crisis (2003–2008) with the post-crisis period (2008–2013), in order to identify changes in restructuring practices and to pinpoint the sectors that have been disproportionately affected, in employment terms, by the global recession. Also included is a critical assessment of all ERM activities, including the two newer policy-oriented databases: public support instruments and restructuring legislation. Finally, the report places the spotlight on the phenomenon of offshoring, charting the decline in offshoring activity by European firms since the onset of the crisis.

The EU and its citizens faced enormous challenges in 2012 as the limited economic recovery of the previous year stalled, GDP fell and unemployment began to grow again. As this yearbook on Living and working in Europe 2012 describes, one of the starkest findings was the divergence between and within countries. Some Member States have suffered greatly while others have not. Higher-paid jobs have been much more resilient than low to mid-paid jobs and have grown. Groups that were already vulnerable have suffered more in the crisis and countries have diverged on quality of life measures.

The research programme in 1998 followed the framework of the 1997-2000 rolling programme. That rolling programme had set out the areas for the Foundation’s contribution to European social policy as six challenges; employment, equal opportunities, health and wellbeing, sustainable development, social cohesion, and participation.