Small and medium-sized enterprises

As the war in Ukraine has intensified, the cost of food, raw materials and energy prices, already high due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has continued to rise substantially. Ahead of coordinated action at EU level, as agreed by EU energy ministers on 9 September 2022, governments across the EU have

The social partners reacted differently to the government's plans to increase the rate of the special tax for microenterprises, the unions concerned over the lower social protection afforded the workers and employers worried about losing competitiveness due to increased labour costs. In the end, the

The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 puts an end to the use of exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts.

In June 2001, Portugal's Institute for Innovation in Training (INOFOR) assessed a project it had been running on "Paths to innovation", which sought to promote organisational innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Such innovation is thought to be rare in Portugal. Notable points

According to a survey published in March 2001 by the Confindustria employers' confederation, the innovative capacity of small firms in Italy is being hampered by factors such as the rigidity of the labour market, the lack of skilled labour, and a high tax burden. Meanwhile, at a May 2001 conference

Trade unions originally developed in Ireland in response to the spread of industrialisation. Many employers in the early factories used authoritarian methods and working conditions were often extremely poor. Individual workers were unable to resist this exploitation, so they organised collectively

Since the mid-1990s, the city council, the Labour Market Service (Arbeitsmarktservice, AMS) and social partner organisations have been cooperating to improve the employment situation in Vienna, which had been relatively poor for some years. In the late 1990s, these efforts were translated into a

The "industrial relations overhaul" project initiated by France's MEDEF employers' confederation in early 2000 has given rise to a protest movement involving all trade unions in early 2001, including a day of demonstrations on 25 January. At the root of this protest are MEDEF's proposals on