Owczarzak, Radosław

/The education and training sector is not only an important employer in itself, but is also expected to play a key role as a provider of skills for the knowledge-based economy, contributing to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth as set out in the Europe 2020 strategy. This study’s first aim was to provide an analysis of the quantitative and qualitative mismatches between demand and supply of labour and skills in the education sector, which might ultimately contribute to its employment performance. The second aim was to assess performance of the education and training sector and its capacity for providing adequate skills across the economy./

The reduction of working time has played a major role in lessening the impact of lowered production output on employment levels, and this project aims to investigate short-time working and temporary layoff schemes which have been used as a means of avoiding redundancies by many Member States during the recession. Eurofound has conducted an in-depth analysis of schemes available in nine Member States during the recent economic crisis. This is one of the individual country reports describing the Polish national public support scheme. A comparative analysis of all the individual schemes forms the thematic part of the ERM Report 2010 – Extending flexicurity – The potential of short-time working schemes.

In the face of recession, falling demand and the consequent slowing of production, short-time working and temporary layoff schemes have been extended (or introduced) in many Member States. These schemes, often with the aid of public funds, reduce working time, while protecting workers’ incomes and company solvency; frequently, the time spent not working is used for training instead. This report examines the practice of reduced working time across Europe, and looks in detail at how it is implemented in 10 Member States, with a view to determining the contribution that such schemes can make in implementing the common principles of flexicurity, especially in light of the broad-based consensus they enjoy among the social partners.

/This document lists further sources of information on the commerce sector that may be of interest to the reader./

/Modern biotechnology is one of the key enabling technologies of the 21st century: it could potentially prevent, treat and cure a wide range of diseases. However, the development of biomedical products – especially drugs – is an expensive, long-term endeavour. Thus, the biomedical healthcare sector relies on a wide range of supporting sectors and interacts with public administrations in all phases of the development, manufacturing and selling of a product. In a European policy context, the biomedical sector offers the potential to create a knowledge base that could contribute to Europe’s competitiveness in the global market. This dossier aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the trends and forces shaping the sector, drawing primarily on recent original Eurofound research. It provides a sector mapping report, company and cluster studies, future scenarios and links to recommends sources of information./

/Dublin 19-20 November 2007/