Sustainable development is a key challenge in the local, national and global context – and it continues to be a fundamental topic at the European Centre. Our contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relevant to social and health policy are highlighted in each of the 26 projects that are briefly described in this report of activities.
The Work and Welfare Unit implements projects in research and applied science in the fields of employment, social inclusion and social security. The Unit aims to contribute to the improvement of social welfare policies and focuses on the most disadvantaged groups of society.
During the past year 12 projects have been implemented in the areas of posting of workers, welfare state and governmental reforms, mutual learning activities and stakeholder workshops as well as know-how transfer within the Centre’s Bridge Building function.
The year of 2019 saw the Health and Care Unit consolidate its role as a knowledge centre for research on inequalities in health and care through the acquisition of grants in highly competitive calls. Besides inequalities, 2019 was also marked by a number of projects with a strong policy component in the area of disability.
We also launched the results of the Rights of Older People Index (ROPI), which has been proposed and generously funded by the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The findings of this project have been gathering quite some interest with the European Commission and other stakeholders and we are currently exploring ways to build on this.
Our Bridge Building function with the potential EU Accession countries has already resulted in several ongoing projects as well as in further missions and additional project proposals involving countries on the Western Balkan.
We put our strategic focus on enhanced work with the Eastern Partnership Countries (EaP) and currently implement three larger projects in the region: Posting of third country nationals; Posting of workers in Eastern Europe; Support for better social services for the most vulnerable groups in Kosovo. In 2020, we will strengthen cooperation work on long-term care and social security.
