The impact of EU labour mobility on the Member States of the EU

Projects funded under this destination should contribute to the following expected impacts in the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027^[1]:

• Strengthening social and economic resilience and sustainability
• Boosting inclusive growth and reducing vulnerabilities effectively

The expected impacts reflect the two-pronged nature of the destination. On the one hand, research funded by this destination will improve the understanding of how the macro drivers of change (technological change, climate change, new global trade patterns, along with migration, human mobility, and other demographic changes) impact society and inform policy makers on how to mitigate negative consequences and harness newly created opportunities. The results obtained should improve the understanding of the interplay between different drivers of change and their social, ethical, political, and economic implications. The improved understanding of these challenges and their economic, social, and distributional impacts will fill in the research gaps while also inform the design and assessment of policies addressing existing and emerging challenges, including in the areas of education, well-being and mental health.

On the other hand, research and innovation investment should be geared towards deepening the understanding of how ongoing changes impact society, with a specific emphasis on the key objectives of boosting inclusive and sustainable growth and effectively reducing vulnerabilities, poverty and inequalities. This knowledge should provide valuable insights to policymakers to design and assess policies that effectively address vulnerabilities while capitalizing on emerging opportunities.

Overall, the destination’s activities will help promote the EU’s inclusive growth, resilience, and fair transition towards climate neutrality, by providing solid analytical evidence to implementing actions related to:

• The European Pillar of Social Rights, and its Action Plan with its three ambitious targets (78% employment rate, 60% of population with yearly training, and reduction of the number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion by at least 15 million by 2030)
• the European Education Area and its EU-level 2030 targets
• The Union of Skills (including envisaged initiatives on skills portability and the European Strategy for Vocational Education and Training, the Pact for Skills and the Skills Agenda)
• the first-ever EU Anti-Poverty Strategy and the European Affordable Housing Plan
• The Union of Equality policies and strategies, including:
  • the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030^[2] (in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities^[3]); the European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882), and the European Disability Card
  • The Gender Equality Strategy 2020 – 2025 and the Directive combating violence against women and domestic violence
  • EU Anti-racism Action Plan 2020-2025
  • The Strategic EU Framework for Roma Equality, Inclusion and Participation 2020-2030
  • The LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025
• The Communication on Demographic change in Europe: a toolbox for action
• The EU’s just transition policy framework, in line with the 2040 Climate Target Plan, including the Just Transition Mechanism, the Social Climate Fund, and the Council Recommendation on ensuring a fair transition towards climate neutrality
• The new Pact for European Social Dialogue and the Council Recommendation on strengthening social dialogue in the EU.
• The European Child Guarantee
• The Council Recommendation on adequate minimum income
• The Commission Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health
• The new Pact on Asylum and Migration and its accompanying actions, initiatives and legislation.

A new European Partnership on Social Transformations and Resilience^[4], focused on the social sciences and humanities (SSH), will be launched to make use of their potential to foster resilience, fairness and inclusiveness, and social cohesion in the light of changes in climate and environment, technology, demography, and unexpected shocks. The Partnership will fund research and innovation activities in the areas of the future of work, modernisation of social protection and essential services, education and skills development and a fair transition towards climate neutrality.

Applicants are encouraged to consider, where relevant, the services offered by the current and future EU-funded European Research Infrastructures, particularly those in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) domain^[5].

Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this research is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

To maximise the impacts of R&I under this Destination in line with EU priorities, international cooperation is encouraged whenever relevant in the proposed topics.

Research on social and economic transformations funded by topics in the present Work Programme will build upon its predecessors in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe and further push the boundaries of state-of-the-art knowledge. It will do so by further engaging with a vast array of stakeholders, not limited to universities and research centres, but also extending to social partners (trade unions and business organizations), civil society organizations, practitioners, VET providers, and SMEs.

The destination will rely on a carefully balanced mix of actions, to bring together a balanced and appropriate set of stakeholders to achieve research of the highest quality, while aiming at providing recommendations to policymakers at European, national, regional and local level that could have a beneficial societal and economic impact. In order to facilitate the latter, it will maximise the feedback to policy and the dissemination and exploitation of research and innovation results and practices in the domain of social and economic transformations.

[1] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/6abcc8e7-e685-11ee-8b2b-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A52021DC0101

[3] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities

[4] see topic HORIZON-CL2-2026-02-TRANSFO-01 in this Work Programme

[5] https://ri-portfolio.esfri.eu/ for example CESSDA - Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

Expected Outcome:

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Policymakers gain insights into the economic and social effects of worker mobility across the EU, including effects on wages, fiscal budgets, and social systems for both sending and receiving regions.
• The benefits of mobility are maximised through actionable recommendations, which consider challenges such as demographic changes, regional effects, digitalisation and, to a suitable extent, further developments such as the green transition or adaptation to climate change (including its potential impact on the economic development and the attractiveness of regions) or the green transition and discussions around the accession of further countries to the EU and wider geopolitical instabilities.

Scope:

While the EU facilitates free movement as one of the four freedoms of the single market, the long-term social and economic dynamics and implications for both receiving and, especially, sending regions remain underexplored. These include not only direct effects on fiscal and social budgets but also more subtle impacts, such as on the networks, skills, and experiences that individuals bring back to their home regions, but also on the income distribution in the country from which the movers originate.

Gaining a deeper, data-supported understanding of these diverse often complex effects is crucial for shaping policies that effectively harness the benefits of mobility across Europe. In doing so the research shall contribute to the ongoing efforts of strengthening the internal market and make Europe more competitive, while also ensuring social fairness and delivering on the European Pillar of Social Rights, in particular with regard to fair working conditions and ensuring access to adequate income and social protection for all. For the variations across different groups (including - but not limited to - gender, age, level of qualification) could be explored. Harnessing the benefits of mobility is also to be seen in the wider context of the green and digital transitions, necessitating enhanced labour mobility to address skill mismatches and shortages and demographic challenges.

Proposals should build on relevant previous research (including from SSH disciplines), some of which has been conducted in previous Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 projects^[1]. Proposals should have a clear focus. Quantitative approaches and/or econometrics should be part of the proposed methodology. Approaches which can capture developments over time, such as panel analysis, might thereby be of added value.

Projects should analyse the effects of labour mobility on the functioning of social security systems (eventually differentiating between the different pillars of the social security systems, e.g. pension system, health, care, etc.) in countries of origin and destination and their coordination and/or provide research which fosters an informed debate on potential strategies for a future-proof and efficient EU-level social security coordination.

Beyond that, the projects may:

• Explore ways to improve the quantification of the volume of various forms [e.g. long-term movers, seasonal work and other forms of short-term mobility, postings, cross-border (tele-)work etc] of labour mobility and/or make available figures more comparable across Member States.
• Develop economic models to assess the EU-level economic effects of labour mobility.
• Pay attention to the ecological effects of labour mobility and link those with the socio-economic effects.
• Analyse whether and in which way the composition of movers (e.g. skill-level, age structure, status in labour market, etc.) matters for the socio-economic effects observed in the countries/regions of origin/destination.
• Provide a comparative analysis of intra-EU labour mobility with labour mobility in other world regions or to geographical mobility within Member States.
• Develop and test a model to forecast labour mobility in different scenarios (e.g. making assumptions about the economic and social development in different parts of the EU).
• Take an evidence-based position whether – and in which way - geographical mobility contributes to manage economic change (e.g. whether movers are more willing to work in another sector).
• Analyse to which extent and under which conditions regions with net-outward mobility have benefited or can benefit – eventually in the longer run – from this mobility.
• Investigate the economic and social differences between labour migration and labour mobility, the experience with EU enlargement might be used to analyse this.
• Provide evidence on which policy instruments are most suitable to ensure a labour mobility which is not perceived as unfair (e.g linked to exploitation, social dumping etc.).

These aspects illustrate thematic areas which could contribute to the objective of developing a vision for the future of labour mobility in the European Union and to discuss how legal and institutional frameworks can be adapted to support mobility in a way that is both economically and socially beneficial. This includes modernising the coordination of social security and ensuring that policies reflect the realities of modern society and work arrangements.

Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

[1] See e.g. HORIZON-CL2-2022-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-02 - The impact of spatial mobility on European demographics, society, welfare system and labour market; https://publications.europa.eu/resource/cellar/a9351b1c-4d31-11ee-9220-01aa75ed71a1.0001.03/DOC_1 ; https://publications.europa.eu/resource/cellar/d697ee14-77ad-11ea-a07e-01aa75ed71a1.0001.01/DOC_1 ; https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/727072 ; https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/794030