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DIGIQU@LPUB Final conference: 25 September 2023, Brussels/Online

During the past two years, eight country teams have assessed how digitalisation has impacted on job quality and social dialogue in the public services across Europe. Register now for the hybrid final conference in Brussels, which will be the occasion to learn about the project’s key messages and rich country evidence from Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain. The focus is on three sectors: electricity, national administrations and hospitals. Keynote speakers include Eckhard Voss, Aida Ponce Del Castillo, Valeria Pulignano, Ricardo Contreras and Jan-Willem Goudriaan.

Check out this new think piece for the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab by Sebastiano Sabato, who discusses the functions that welfare states should perform to ensure a just, green transition. While an EU framework for a just transition is emerging, this should be further developed, strengthening the provision of ‘buffers’ to the most vulnerable citizens and paying more attention to social and civic dialogue to create consensus on the green transition.

A new report of the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) by Slavina Spasova, Angelina Atanasova, Sebastiano Sabato and Federico Moja explores the measures put in place by 35 European countries to improve the transparency of their social protection systems. Especially the past five years can be seen as a turning point in that significant progress has been made in the provision of digitalised, high-quality and easily accessible general and personalised information, partly accelerated by the pandemic. Access to information needs to be easier for the more vulnerable, for people with disabilities and in certain cases for non-standard workers and the self-employed. 

The 2022 edition of the joint ETUI-OSE 'Bilan social' is out now .

A health crisis, an economic and financial crisis and a climate crisis are unfolding in parallel, while full-scale war is back in Europe. And yet, important progress has been made inter alia on minimum wages, occupational health and safety, the working conditions of people working through platforms, and gender equality. Furthermore, social investment and a ‘just’ green transition have (somehow) been promoted under the umbrella of the EU’s recovery. A European health space is in the making, and the idea of an EU Social Imbalances Procedure is on the table. Could the EUs ‘open strategic autonomy’ paradigm provide a window of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambitions?

This Research paper, written by colleagues from the Institute of Public Affairs (Warsaw) in the context of the European Commission-funded DIGIQU@LPUB project, presents the assessment of the impact of digitalisation on job quality and social dialogue in the public services in Poland as ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’. Examining three sectors – electricity, public administration and healthcare – the study finds that the impact of digitalisation on working conditions and job satisfaction is rather positive in Poland. However, the assessment of digital solutions may be less positive than it could be, due to flawed implementation.