Trends in national social dialogue in responding to external shocks or crises: Background paper

This paper provides an overview of the involvement of the social partners in policymaking and social dialogue in recent years, primarily at national peak level. It will focus on the evolution of social dialogue over the past decade and a half in terms of its response to external shocks, focusing on three key periods: the financial and economic crisis between 2008 and 2012; the subsequent recovery and consolidation phase between 2013 and early 2020; the recent series of new crises, starting in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic up to today’s combined challenges of inflation, the ‘cost of living crisis’ and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.