European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
Eurofound's ERM database on restructuring-related legal regulations provides information on regulations in the Member States of the European Union and Norway which are explicitly or implicitly linked to anticipating and managing change.
Article 3 §1 and §2; Article 4 §1; Article 6; Article 8 §1 25 NOVEMBER 2021. - Wet houdende fiscale en sociale vergroening van de mobiliteit (1)
In Belgium, employers can provide a mobility budget as long as their employees renounce the company car they already had or could claim. With the mobility budget, the worker can finance the supply of environmentally friendly company vehicles like full-electric cars or cars with CO2 emissions under 95 g/km. Battery electric vehicles are 100% company tax deductible.
The law also promotes sustainable transport modes. Any expenditure made by the employee within this pillar is fully exempt from social security contributions and withholding taxes:
A new law with additional adjustments was formally signed on 3 December 2021. From 1 January 2022, the new law introduced some changes to the system to ensure that employers and employees would use it more often. Concretely:
A survey of 260,000 employees carried out by HR service provider Acerta HR in February 2021 shows that the mobility budget reaches 1.5 out of every 1,000 employees with a company car. This is a meager result, but it shows progress from the beginning of 2020, when it was only 1 in 10,000.
Acerta did another survey the following year, which showed more positive results: In 2021, 1 in 200 employees entitled to a company car (0.48%) took advantage of the measure, which is three times more than in 2020. The measure seems to be getting increasingly popular. Acerta recorded as many applications for the mobility budget in January as last year's four-month average.
Eurofound (2021), Belgium: Company incentives to deploy electric vehicles, Restructuring legislation database, Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/legislationdb/company-incentives-to-deploy-electric-vehicles/belgium
Between the end of 2022 and the first half of 2023, almost 300,000 employees working for ‘big tech’ companies were laid off across the world, making headlines for months in global media. This development has been a shock, considering the high numbers of jobs in well-known tech corporations with a reputation for offering good working conditions and well-paid positions.
The retail banking sector is fertile ground for studying the impacts of digitalisation on work and employment. Financial services are increasingly provided online, without the intermediary of customer-facing institutions. Many banks in the sector have been undergoing serial restructuring since the global financial crisis, and it is one of the few service sectors with stagnant or declining employment.
Since 2011, the Restructuring support instruments database of the EU PolicyWatch has been collecting information on measures that assist companies and workers to anticipate and manage restructuring. This article looks at measures in the database aimed at supporting employees and employers during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022).
Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor database reveals the impact of the energy crisis on employment in the EU. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, energy prices have hit record highs. The European Commission imposed sanctions and limitations on the import of oil and gas from Russia, which has reacted by reneging on supply commitments to many Member States.
