Institute for Forecasting

Project description

The central goals of POW-Bridge are to study possible gaps between procedures (legal basis) and practices (experiences) in the rules governing the posting of workers, to identify challenges and to develop and share effective solutions for posting companies and agencies tasked with enforcing posting legislation. Thereby, a particular focus is on the possible challenges resulting from interactions between the revised posting Directive passed in 2018 and other EU and national legislation.

The core activities are

• Transnational cooperation (improving cross-border collaboration between stakeholders and promoting employer involvement in evidence-based policy-making)
• Comparative research (analysing and comparing the situation in different countries)
• Information dissemination (providing policy makers, enforcement agencies, employers and other stakeholders with research results)

Thereby, POW-Bridge supports an inclusive, participatory and transparent implementation process of the 2018 Posting Directive.

Methods

The research component of the project will investigate the gap between procedures (legal basis) and practices (experiences) in posting rule enactment as well as how the implementation of the Directive interacts with other EU and national regulations related to posting and how this influences employers’ practices and their deliberations to engage in posting. The study will focus, in particular, on national rules and regulations on social security, health insurance, temporary agency work and company law; aspects that have been less studied in this context. Primary data will be collected in each country that will enable the assessment of the impact of these different regulations on actual practices and to what extent these differ across the countries. The method used for the primary data collection will be based on vignettes which will be specifically designed to meet the purposes of the assessment, i.e. elicit insights from both sides of the institutional relationship: posting employers and street-level bureaucrats/state agencies' representatives on posting practices. The kick-off, mutual learning labs, strategic board meetings, and the final international conference will serve as activities that aim to both enhance cooperation and assist in sharing information among participating stakeholders and to a wider audience.

Transnational Dimension

POW-Bridge covers eight countries across Europe (Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and North Macedonia). The countries include sending and receiving countries as well as EU member states and candidate countries. The project is carried out by seven project partners and several associated organisations located in these countries.  
The partners and invited representatives of public authorities and social partners will participate in Mutual Learning Labs to discuss challenges to enacting the posting legislation and to develop policy recommendations. A final conference in Venice in 2021 will bring together all participating partners and external policy experts to discuss and disseminate the project’s findings.

Project partners

Lead partner: European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (Austria)
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy)
Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia)
Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw (Poland)
Association for Research, Communications and Development “Public” (North Macedonia)
Center for Social Policy (Serbia)
University of Primorska (Slovenia)

Associated organization from Slovakia is Odborový zväz KOVO.  

Deliverables and promotional materials and events

Project flyer (EN)
Newsletter 1 (EN)
Country report (EN)
Comparative working paper (EN)
Mutual Learning Lab MLL2 in Bratislava
Newsletter 2 (EN)
Policy brief (EN, SK)
Video podcast (EN, SK)
Newsletter 3 (EN)