New topics, new tools and innovative practices adopted by the social partners

Social dialogue still matters in Europe. Recent EU-level policy debates have highlighted that, particularly since the 2008 crisis, the emergence of new debates on social justice, democracy, the quality of work and new models for labour relations have been challenging traditional industrial relations and social dialogue systems. The main objective of this comparative study is to gather information on how social partners in the EU28 and Norway have responded to the many new political, legal and social challenges that have arisen in recent years. The report looks at the way social partners are exploring new topics and new tools, and developing innovative approaches. At least two different types of new topics can be identified: those that are new from an EU-wide perspective (such as climate change) and those that are new only for some Member States (such as gender equality). The study examines the practices of the social partners at cross-sectoral, sectoral and national level, covering 2000–2014.