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After a long period of price stability, inflation has made a remarkable comeback in the EU. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy crisis spurred by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the disruption of the international supply chain, among other factors, have driven up the prices of commodities and goods. While nominal wages picked up in 2021 and 2022, real wage growth has remained below inflation, affecting mainly low-income groups. Even though EU institutions expect inflation to slowly decline by 2025, many collective bargaining rounds have barely been able to keep up with the rapid increase in prices in 2022. Consequently, trade unions’ demands for compensation and pay increases in collectively agreed wages put pressure on some sectors. Updating minimum wages (in line with the directive on adequate minimum wages) plays a key role in protecting the purchasing power of low wages. With wages not keeping up with inflation rates, tensions may resurface in social dialogue and collective bargaining over the coming years.

In collecting information on essential services, the European Commission requested Eurofound to provide input on certain aspects of existing and planned measures in the Member States to improve access to essential services in reference to Principle 20 of the European Pillar of Social Rights. For this exercise, the scope was on energy services, public transport, and digital communications, and the focus on people at risk of poverty or social exclusion (in most cases in practice, people on low incomes). This paper provides an overview of the measures in the Member States based mainly on the inputs from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents, collected in February–March 2022. The paper reviews the measures across the entire EU by clustering the major types or targets of the measures to make essential services accessible, and by succinctly listing main country-level examples. It provides information for understanding the diversity and similarities of the measures applied and suggests pointers on areas where policy action could be developed.

This report explores the distribution of household wealth in the EU Member States and analyses the role of wealth in social mobility. Using data from three datasets (the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and the Luxembourg Wealth Study), it focuses on wealth per household member. Wealth composition is compared across social groups and countries, and the role of housing assets in wealth distribution and negative wealth is assessed. The findings show that parental background, including parental wealth, has an impact on educational and wealth mobility. In order to promote equality of opportunities in terms of access to education and housing, the impact of wealth inequalities, including differences in parental wealth, should be counterbalanced. The report also suggests that regularising wealth declaration in the EU could be a way of promoting social justice by minimising hidden wealth and combating tax evasion.