Watch the webinar - AskTheExpert: State of play of social dialogue in Europe

Speaker: Christian Welz

Christian Welz worked until recently as a senior research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound, managing projects and developing expertise and quality of research in the field of industrial relations (European Industrial Relations Dictionary and Index, European Social Dialogue, capacity building, working life country profiles). Prior to this, he was Deputy Director of a French-German training institute for civil servants, managed the EU unit of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Augsburg and was professor of EU law. He studied law and political sciences at the Universities of Bonn, Freiburg, Aix-en-Provence and Strasbourg and holds a PhD from the University of Nijmegen. He was appointed honorary professor at the University of Kehl and was visiting fellow at Massey University (Auckland, NZ). He is Advisory Board Member of the European Journal of Industrial Relations, the European Labour Law Journal and the Global Employment Institute of the International Bar Association.

Speaker: Ricardo Rodriguez Contreras

Ricardo Rodriguez Contreras is a research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound and focuses on comparative industrial relations, social dialogue and collective bargaining. He is also involved in research on restructuring and the implications of technology and digital change in employment relations. Prior to joining Eurofound in 2014, he worked as a consultant for the European Commission and the European Parliament conducting studies at EU level assessing the implementation of social legislation throughout the EU, the EEA and the candidate countries. For years, he performed training activities for multinational companies and European Works Councils in the area of comparative industrial relations and labour legislation in the EU. He has also worked for the Inter-American Development Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration in some countries of Latin America. He holds a BSc in Law from the Complutense University in Madrid.

Moderator: Mary McCaughey

Mary McCaughey is Head of Information and Communication in Eurofound. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and the College of Europe, Bruges, she started work in Brussels with Europolitics and the Wall Street Journal Europe. She worked with the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA) in South Africa during the country’s transition to democracy, and in 1998 she took up the post of spokesperson with the Delegation of the European Union in Pretoria, heading up its press and information department during the negotiation of the EU–South Africa free trade agreement. Following the end of the Kosovo War, she worked as a communications consultant for the European Agency for Reconstruction in Serbia. She took up the post of Editor-in-Chief in Eurofound in 2003.