The European Centre is supporting the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy (BMAW) in implementing bilateral labor market cooperation in the Danube region with the accession states Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine with services such as studies/reviews/policy advise services.

E-GRUiEN is an inter-disciplinary and multi-method research project that asks:

• How best to ensure a just green and digital transition for all affected parties by using social dialogue institutions and practices to protect, represent, and include precarious and non-standard workers and to protect affected workers currently in primary labour market jobs from falling into precarity? 

E-GRUiEN combines historical analysis from similar past transformations, observational data, such as legal and policy analyses, public statements by social partners, as well as quantitative analyses of secondary data from labour force and social surveys with original data that will be collected through qualitative interviews, focus groups, and participatory action research. Through this, we will get a systematic understanding of the current situation in social dialogue, bargaining, and the current outcomes which can be linked to the industrial relations for each case sector in each case country. Overall, the project will give evidence based guidance on how social dialogue institutions can be designed to steer societies through fundamental economic transformations such as the rise of new sectors and the growth of new forms of work in the context of digitalisation and green transition.

NEXT-UP is a large-scale interdisciplinary and multi-method research project with the goals of

1. investigating and predicting the long-term effects of the COVID-19 crisis on youth transitions from school to work and
2. co-creating, with stakeholders, evidence-informed, future-oriented policies and programmes.

This  project is financed by Horizon Europe and implemented by a consortium of ten reserach organisations and one student union located in nine European countries. The European Centre’s contribution to the project focuses on the analysis of youth employability policies used during the pandemic and the development of measures fit to meet future needs in the context of the digitial transition.

The European Centre is partnering in a consortium with Ecorys Europe, HIVA KU Leuven, and Milieu Consulting to provide analytical and methodological support related to qualitative analysis, mapping and mixed methods to the European Labour Authority (ELA). The provision of analytical and methodological support consists of identifying, compiling, analysing and presenting qualitative data from external sources. This can include desk research (e.g. literature or document reviews) as well as primary research (e.g. expert interviews, focus groups, delphi surveys, case studies etc.). The consortium thus might be asked to design and implement qualitative data gathering exercises on behalf of ELA, as well as to compile, analyse and present the information. While the focus of this Lot is on qualitative research methods and data, a mixed methods approach might be requested for individual assignments, that is the combination of qualitative approaches (main task) with a minor degree of quantitative ones (e.g. contextualisation or supplementary statistics).

The European Disability Expertise (EDE) is a framework contract, financed by the European Commission, managed by the Human European Consultancy to collect, analyse and provide independent scientific data and information relating to national policies and legislation, linked with provisions at EU level, as well as providing information about the situation of persons with disabilities. Magdi Birtha, Eszter Zolyomi and Felix Gross-Wohlgemuth are part of the central team of senior experts in the EDE network and are responsible for the annual European Semester task and the development of statistical reports, linked to the annual thematic and ad-hoc reports.