The book chapter discusses a specific form of professional relationship between actors in labour market and social policy, namely partnership. Partnership can be distinguished from other common forms, such as coordination and cooperation, by a close relationship between partners. Partnerships are recognised as drivers of (social) innovation at the EU level, in particular in labour market and social policy.

This chapter presents the experiences of a country with a well-established welfare state during the Covid crisis. Austria’s labour market, key infrastructures and health system were stabilised by unprecedented policy measures. However, the pandemic also highlighted a number of major shortcomings of the regulatory framework of social and health policy responses. A special focus is being put on long-term care as this sector has been hit particularly hard in terms of mortality, related structural shortcomings and political debates.

This chapter is a contribution to the book "Posted Workers. La condizione dei lavoratori in distacco transnazionale in Europa" and it focuses on the under-researched topic of occupational safety and health vulnerabilities (OSH) of posted workers across the EU.

This chapter is a contribution to the book "Posted Workers. La condizione dei lavoratori in distacco transnazionale in Europa" and it focuses on posting in Austria by giving an overview of the posting trends, the governance system, and the main challenges in the Austrian context, specifically wage and social dumping, OSH, and rule enforcement, before providing a few concluding remarks.

Kai Leichsenring contributed a chapter to Christian Aspalter’s ‘Ideal types in comparative social policy’ in which he applies ideal types to long-term care analysis and emerging systems in a global context.