This policy brief examines child poverty trends and the expansion of social protection programs in Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes with recommendations for strengthening these interventions to effectively address child poverty, especially in times of crisis.

This policy brief presents key findings of the mutual learning activities implemented by the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research together with its Bridge Building (BB) countries for the period 2021-2024 and shares insights on participants’ lessons learnt. It also includes a reflection on the methodological challenges faced by the European Centre as facilitator of the activities and results of the project evaluation. 

How do increasing economic risk cleavages amongst natives shape growing negativity towards immigration? Group conflict theory suggests that tension between immigrant and native groups arises as a reaction to the actual or perceived loss of economic privilege by the majority group members. Yet, such an economically rooted formation of sentiments towards immigration is widely debated. This article aims to clarify and more precisely assess the economic threat mechanisms of inter-group conflict, remedying limitations in earlier work. 

This article highlights the growing significance of intermediated temporary labour mobility, and how it has put further pressure on industrial relations institutions in Central and Eastern Europe since EU enlargement. 

Healthcare payment reforms are frequently implemented alongside service delivery reforms, thus rendering it difficult to disentangle their impact. This scoping review aims to link alternative payment arrangements for healthcare services within their context of service delivery, to assess their impact on quality of chronic care, and to disentangle, where possible, the impact of payment reforms from changes to service delivery.