Panteia in panel on the impact of inflation
Last week, at the invitation of Eurofound, colleague Thomas de Winter attended the Industrial Relations in Europe Conference (IREC) 2023 in Durham, England. IREC is an academic conference on industrial relations in Europe. Panteia participated in a panel discussion organised by Eurofound on the impact of inflation on citizens and workers and the role of collective bargaining in it. In the panel, speakers from five EU countries, namely Cyprus, Hungary Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands, told how their countries are dealing with rising inflation, what the government is doing to ease the pain for citizens and workers, and whether collective bargaining plays a role in fighting inflation. In the Netherlands, the best-known measure is the 2023 price cap on energy. In addition, inflation led to the biggest collective bargaining wage increase in 40 years. The minimum wage was also raised by 10.15% in one go. All measures taken by governments can also be found in the Eurofound PolicyWatch database.