The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions in Europe (EUROFOUND) (https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/), established in 1975, is a tripartite agency of the European Union that provides data and analysis to support the development of better social and labour and employment policies. Eurofound carries out its tasks in partnership with governments, employers, trade unions and European Union institutions.
Eurofound has a network of national (and European level) correspondents from all EU Member States and Norway. The network provides expert national analysis of key relevance to the European debate, enabling comparisons across developments and contributing significantly with high quality analysis to the European Observatory on Working Life (EurWork) and the European Monitoring Centre on Change.
Correspondents work on topics related to labour market developments, employment policies, company restructuring, and social policy issues. The data collected provides an up-to-date picture of the situation in EU countries, allows the Foundation to map industrial relations policies and practices, and enables pan-European comparative analyses and developments.
A team of IPS-BAS, led by Prof. Dr. Vasil Kirov, prepared a project proposal and won the European Foundation’s competition for a national correspondent for Bulgaria for the period 2022 – 2026 (The team has already been a national correspondent for the period 2014 – 2018). The team includes Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ekaterina Markova, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gabriela Yordanova, Prof. Dr. Rumiana Stoilova, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexey Pamporov, Dr. Bagryan Malamin, Prof. Pepka Boyadjieva, Diana Nenkova, Margarita Kosheva and Mina Kostova
The team’s activities include preparation of: information for comparative research reports (CAR); research on the representativeness of social partners (REP); reports on industrial relations developments; information on company restructuring (fact-sheets); articles on key issues of working life and updating databases on the legal framework in the field of labour.
The information prepared is based on qualitative interviews and available public sources – research results, statistical data, legal and regulatory documents, media publications. For this purpose, the team maintains contacts with representatives of state institutions, trade unions, employers’ organizations, academia. Thus, a well-developed network of partners has been formed. The work of the project also supports and facilitates the own professional development of the members of the collective and their research activities. At the same time, thanks to the popularity of Eurofound’s materials, which are followed and used by European institutions, trade unions, entrepreneurs, representatives of the business community from different countries, the work of the national correspondents receives high visibility.
Period: 2022-2026
Contact – Prof. Dr. Vassil Kirov – Head of the Bulgarian project team –
