This report describes the main developments in industrial relations and working conditions in 2013 in the 28 EU Member States and in Norway, from both a national and EU-level perspective. Beginning with an overview of the current economic and political context in these countries, the report goes...

This guide shows how a life cycle approach can be used to identify and reduce the environmental and health impacts of the products we use. It underlines the importance of considering these issues across the entire life cycle of a product and sets them within the context of policy development,...

This Country Focus studies the development of private consumption in France during the decade before the crisis. Are French consumers greater spendthrifts than their European fellows? In this paper, we estimate a consumption function to show that strong growth of private consumption in France...

In Germany private consumption virtually stagnated for nearly a decade and clearly lagged behind GDP growth. This Country Focus uses the estimation of a consumption function to show that the drop in employment is the most important factor behind the reluctance to consume in the first half of...

This report gives an overview of working conditions, job quality, workers’ health and job sustainability in the accommodation sector (NACE 55).1 It is based mostly on the fifth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), which gathers data on working conditions and the quality of work across 34...

Online hotel reservation systems are increasing in importance and greatly facilitate cross-border consumer activity. The Internet has enabled hotels to contract directly with a huge number of potential customers. It has also revitalised the role of agents and lead to a new type of agent, the web...