This report was produced for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions as part of the secondary analysis of the latest European Working Conditions Survey. The first part reviews existing literature on the divergence/convergence of European countries’ social models (clusters, varieties of capitalism, etc.). The second part comprises a statistical analysis of the data of the five European Working Conditions Surveys carried out by the Dublin Foundation between 1990 and 2005. 27 European countries are analysed. Possible convergences/divergences in working conditions in the different European countries over this time are highlighted, with a view to ascertaining whether a relative improvement in, or on the contrary a worsening of the quality of employment in Europe can be noted over the last 15 years.

The final report was published by the Foundation in 200:

In 2008, as part of the European project YOUTH coordinated by CESOS, the OSE focused on the issue of the integration of young persons into the labour market in Belgium. The aim of the project was to provide a complete overview of current practices in the integration of young persons in the 27 EU countries and to identify possible best practices. The analysis was both qualitative and quantitative. Various experts participated in drawing up the national studies. The OSE drafted the national report for Belgium.

This project aims to provide an in depth and multidisciplinary analysis of the impact of European law and policies on national healthcare systems and their social character. It resulted in a book and a conference where the main findings were presented.

RETIS is a European network composed of some fifty European regions, cities and local authorities dealing with the issues of poverty and social exclusion. The objective of the network is to complement and enrich the process initiated at national and European levels through the social inclusion open method of coordination by developing a sort of open method of regional/local coordination with its members, this being the level at which most policies are effectively implemented in the fight against poverty.
 
The OSE has played a steering role in the RETIS network through the provision of:
 
- Policy expertise on European social policies on which to base the policy guidelines of the network;
 
- Technical expertise on employment and social inclusion indicators, steering the technical group on indicators;
 
- Training for the members of the network in different situations and issues of European social policies, in particular their regional and local aspects. This task was performed by producing various types of documents (background notes, reports) as well as by regular interventions during the network’s seminars and congresses.

Bringing together academics and practitioners in the area of company restructuring from several European countries, the AgirE project aimed to provide a theoretical framework for reflection on restructuring in Europe based on a pooling of knowledge gained from academic articles and about thirty detailed case studies. The AgirE project had 3 basic objectives: to draw up a typology of restructuring processes; to strengthen the capacity of players to anticipate and manage restructuring; and to promote new methods of regulation at Community level. On the basis of these three objectives, an approach was developed that focuses on the diversity of the players in order to characterise the restructuring in question (typology), as well as to analyse the way in which the players anticipated and managed the restructuring, ultimately with a view to the promotion of new regulatory methods at Community level.
An international conference was held at the end of the project to present the final report.

For this project, the OSE produced two documents on the issue of anticipating change in the framework of the European Employment Strategy and the establishment of adaptation mechanisms at European level (see publications). The OSE team - Ramón Peña-Casas in cooperation with Philippe Pochet and Dalila Ghailani also drafted the chapter of the final report concerning European restructuring policies and carried out the final evaluation of the project. 

This project, carried out by EAPN Ireland had the aim of considering the usefulness and feasibility of setting minimum social standards in the European Union. Continual exchanges have taken place between the different national partners on the existing standards at the national and regional levels and the issues and difficulties linked to the adoption of common standards at European level. 
The OSE was responsible for the academic support for the reflection and produced two documents on the issue of social standards at European level as well as a comparative study of the guaranteed minimum income schemes in the European Union. 

The aim of this project was to exchange practices both on the role played by local and regional observatories in the fight against poverty and social exclusion as well as on their contribution to the European Social Inclusion OMC. The practices considered included instruments as well as types of organisation and the functioning of numerous local or regional observatories linked to different types of stakeholders (local or regional authorities, 
NGOs, foundations, trade unions, etc.). The aim was also to establish a network of local experiences based on observation, analysis and support.

The role of the OSE in this project was to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework for the issue of poverty and social exclusion observatories in relation to the European context (inclusion OMC), to create the necessary tools for the follow-up and evaluation of the project, as well as its realisation. 

The OSE was a partner in the international project ’Europe for Patients’, a policy-oriented research project on patient mobility, which was financed by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme for Research of DG Research.

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This project was carried out in cooperation with the economic and social law department of the Université Catholique de Louvain. A conference entitled “The Social Partners' Groundwork on Innovation - Putting the Spotlight on EQUAL's Achievements” was prepared with the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities which took place on 30 May 2006. It brought together some 220 participants including a majority of sectoral and cross-industry social partners, academic experts in the field of social dialogue and industrial relations and Commission representatives. Four topics had been identified which interlace the European social partners' work and the areas in which social partners in the field had coordinated EQUAL projects: adaptation to change, equal opportunities between women and men, active ageing and the employability of vulnerable groups.

The OSE produced a group of topical fact sheets, a background report on the contribution of EQUAL to adaptation to change and restructuring, as well as the final evaluation of the conference.

In 2004, at the behest of the EURESCHANNEL network, the OSE carried out a study on the posting of workers covering the three abovementioned Member States. This study aimed to be both theoretical and practical. The first part provides an overview of the principles applicable to the posting of workers under Community law. The second illustrates the scale of this phenomenon in the three Member States concerned and more specifically examines in more detail whether the cross-border regions of Hainaut, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, West Flanders and Kent can identified as regions that are particularly concerned by posting. The OSE also examined on this occasion the issue of the "salary split" and produced a report on the reasons for as well as the functioning and consequences of the use of such a mechanism.

The objective of this project, carried out by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, was to better define the emerging phenomenon of the working poor in Europe, which represents a complex challenge for European societies. The existing literature was reviewed in order to conceptually identify the issue and to highlight the complex links between employment and social protection, as well as to quantify the incidence and characteristics of the phenomenon both at individual and household level, and identify the policy responses to working poverty.

The final report was published by the Foundation and presented during an international seminar held in Brussels on 1 and 2 July 2004. 

The aim of this project was to discuss the relevance and the fine-tuning of "participatory" indicators on poverty and social exclusion in Belgium, in other terms the indicators resulting from a "knowledge crossroads" process bringing together the partner associations of the General Report on Poverty, representatives of administrations and scientists as well as persons living in poverty and social exclusion. The aim of this project was to define the indicators, or at least fields of information which reflect as closely as possible the difficulties and concerns of persons living in poverty and social exclusion. The OSE was the French-speaking scientific representative within the project.

The organisation of a conference on behalf of the Belgian presidency and the publication of two books on the impact of European integration on health care.

The OSE organised the intellectual and logistical aspects of a major international conference entitled "Towards a better Quality of Employment" for the Belgian Presidency of the EU and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions which was held on 20 and 21 September 2001.
The OSE also contributed to the working group set up by the Foundation on the definition of a conceptual framework on the quality of employment in Europe and on indicators.

The OSE provides expert advice to the Belgian federal public authorities and the national health insurance institute (RIZIV/INAMI) on EU policies that might have an impact on the Belgian health care system.