Social protection
Social protection systems exist to protect people against the risks of loss of income associated with unemployment, ill-health and invalidity, parental responsibilities, costs of children and housing, old age or following the loss of a spouse or parent. The organisation and financing of social protection systems lies with EU Member States. Nevertheless, the EU has a particular role in ensuring, through EU legislation coordinating national social security systems, that people who move across borders and hence come within the remit of different social protection systems are adequately protected. Such legislation mainly concerns statutory social security schemes.
Find the latest content on this topic below.
Foundation Forum 2025: Key takeaways
This paper provides the top 20 takeaways from the Foundation Forum 2025 which took place at IMMA Venues Dublin on 19–20 November 2025.Europe’s social model – The key to competitive growth – Background paper
This background paper outlines the context for the issues to be examined at Eurofound’s Foundation Forum 2025. As the global order proves to be increasingly volatile, the European Union itself is undergoing a profound transformation in terms of its socioeconomic and geopolitical landscape. Enhancing competitiveness and ensuring sustainable economic growth are now at the top of the EU agenda.Digitalisation of social protection
This report focuses on the digitalisation of front- and back-office processes in monetary social benefits. In 10 EU Member States and Norway, a digital application is possible for all, or all but one, of the nine benefits investigated. In at least five Member States, paper applications have been discontinued for some of the benefits.Eurofound’s studies have looked at access to services and benefits both as means to meet specific needs and as part of integrated efforts to promote inclusion. Quality public services are a vital means for achieving high levels of social protection and social inclusion. Eurofound research examines access to and quality of a variety of social services, also investigating the impact of COVID-19 on the use and delivery of such services. The focus is on those services and benefits that respond to the needs of vulnerable groups such as older people, migrants, young people or people with disabilities.
Research also focuses on structural change, driven largely by digitalisation, climate change and also COVID-19 (see infographic below), and how to ensure just transitions that promote social protection and workers’ rights.
Article 2 of the EU Treaty identifies the promotion of a high level of social protection as a key task. The social protection system includes benefits in cash and in kind. The European Pillar of Social Rights highlights access to childcare, healthcare, long-term care and housing alongside unemployment benefits, minimum income and resources for people in old age that ensure they can live in dignity.
The European Pillar of Social Rights sets out 20 key principles and rights essential for fair and well-functioning labour markets and social protection systems. The principles are structured around three categories, one of which is social protection and inclusion. On 4 March 2021, the European Commission presented its action plan to fully implement the Pillar, turning the principles into concrete actions to benefit EU citizens, while also supporting the recovery from the impact of COVID-19. To reduce inequalities, it proposed a new target for the EU to reduce the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion by at least 15 million by 2030, including at least 5 million children.
European Commission: European Pillar of Social Rights Action Planopens in new tab
On 24 March 2021, the Commission proposed an EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child and Council Recommendation establishing the European Child Guarantee to ensure that children at risk of poverty and social exclusion have effective access to key services such as healthcare and education. On 14 June 2021, the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) adopted the European Child Guarantee.
European Commission: EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child and the European Child Guaranteeopens in new tab
European Commission: Council adopts European Child Guaranteeopens in new tab
The Commission uses the European Semester process to monitor the social protection systems of Member States and offers country-specific recommendations where necessary on the use of their social budgets to ensure adequate and sustainable social protection.
European Commission: The European Semesteropens in new tab
Another key priority for the European Commission is to create a Europe fit for the digital age. This includes investing in digital public services and also providing adequate social protection for platform workers.
European Commission: Europe’s Digital Decade: digital targets for 2030opens in new tab
This is a selection of the most important outputs for this topic.
8 October 2024
Social protection 2.0: Unemployment and minimum income benefits
This report focuses on unemployment and minimum income benefits for people of working age. Individuals with short or no employment records (mainly young people), the self-employed, those with non-standard working arrangements, and the long-term unemployed are often not entitled to higher-tier, or any, unemployment benefits. No Member State was identified where more than 80% of those entitled to minimum income benefits receive them. Benefit recipients at higher risk of having an inadequate income include those without access to social housing in areas with high housing costs, unemployed individuals whose most recent job was low paid and the long-term unemployed people. The report also investigates the rejection of applications (frequently, around 30% are rejected), the digitalisation of application processes (most common for unemployment benefits) and economic activation requirements (typically, 1–6% of benefit recipients annually are sanctioned for not complying with activity requirements) and service entitlements.
30 May 2023
Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe
Unaffordable housing is a matter of great concern in the EU. It leads to homelessness, housing insecurity, financial strain and inadequate housing. It also prevents young people from leaving their family home. These problems affect people’s health and well-being, embody unequal living conditions and opportunities, and result in healthcare costs, reduced productivity and environmental damage. Private tenants have faced particularly large housing cost increases, and owners with mortgages are vulnerable to interest rate increases. In addition, many owners without mortgages, especially in post-communist and southern European countries, experience poverty and housing inadequacy. The cost-of-living crisis affects people in all tenancies. Social housing and rent subsidies support many, but capacity differs across and within countries, and these measures exclude certain groups in vulnerable situations and fail to reach everyone who is entitled to them. Three quarters of Member States have Housing First initiatives – providing housing for homeless people – but these mostly operate on a small scale. This report maps housing problems in the EU and the policies that address them, drawing on Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents.
5 July 2022
Policies to support refugees from Ukraine
11 March 2021
COVID-19: Implications for employment and working life
Disclaimer - Please note that this report was updated with revised data (specifically for Bulgaria) on 23 March 2021.
This report sets out to assess the initial impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employment in Europe (up to Q2 2020), including its effects across sectors and on different categories of workers. It also looks at measures implemented by policymakers in a bid to limit the negative effects of the crisis. It first provides an overview of policy approaches adopted to mitigate the impact of the crisis on businesses, workers and citizens. The main focus is on the development, content and impact of short-time working schemes, income support measures for self-employed people, hardship funds and rent and mortgage deferrals. Finally, it explores the involvement of social partners in the development and implementation of such measures and the role of European funding in supporting these schemes.
8 December 2020
Upward convergence in material well-being: Is a COVID-19 setback inevitable?
The EU strives for the upward convergence of its Member States, where their performance improves and gaps between them decrease. Nearly a decade after the Great Recession, the COVID-19 crisis has again put this objective under pressure. This policy brief focuses on convergence in material well-being in Europe. Trends in several indicators largely follow the economic cycle, with upward convergence in good times and downward divergence in bad times. This could mean further divergence and polarisation among Member States as we face a new economic downturn, with the prospect of an uneven pace of recovery across countries when growth returns.
The policy brief presents an overview of policy measures implemented by the EU and Member States to smooth the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. It discusses EU coordination of minimum income schemes as a possible tool to limit deterioration and divergence in the indicators should the economy enter a downturn.
8 October 2020
Access to care services: Early childhood education and care, healthcare and long-term care
The right of access to good-quality care services is highlighted in the European Pillar of Social Rights. This report focuses on three care services: early childhood education and care (ECEC), healthcare, and long-term care. Access to these services has been shown to contribute to reducing inequalities throughout the life cycle and achieving equality for women and persons with disabilities. Drawing on input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents and Eurofound’s own research, the report presents an overview of the current situation in various EU Member States, Norway and the UK, outlining barriers to the take-up of care services and differences in access issues between population groups. It pays particular attention to three areas that have the potential to improve access to services: ECEC for children with disabilities and special educational needs, e-healthcare and respite care.
20 December 2019
Casual work: Characteristics and implications
Casual work, both intermittent and on-call, contributes to labour market flexibility and is therefore increasingly used across Europe. In some countries, practices go beyond the use of casual employment contracts to include other types of contracts and forms of self-employment. While it offers some advantages for both employers and workers, it is often discussed by policymakers at EU and national levels due to the observed negative consequences it has for some workers. Impacts include economic insecurity and unpredictability of working time, which in turn affect workers’ health, well-being and social security. From a labour market perspective, casual work raises concerns about decent social inclusion of vulnerable groups, labour market segmentation and more general trends towards fragmentation of work and brain drain. Some policy responses have already been implemented to tackle these issues; further policy pointers are flagged in the report.
Researchers at Eurofound provide expert insights and can be contacted for questions or media requests.
Marie Hyland
Research officerMarie Hyland joined Eurofound as a research officer in the Social Policies unit in 2023. Her research focuses on issues related to housing, the social implications of the green transition and the socioeconomic situations of vulnerable groups. Prior to joining Eurofound, Marie spent several years as an economist at the World Bank, where her research covered women’s employment and economic empowerment, private sector development and the economics of climate change. Marie holds a PhD in Economics from Trinity College Dublin. During her PhD studies, she was a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of Maryland.
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