Provision of Advisory Services to the European Commission via a European Centre of Expertise in the field of Labour Law, Employment and Labour Market Policies (ECE)

Item Description:

The European Commission, Directorate General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, (referred to below as the contracting authority) is planning to award the contract(s) resulting from the above procurement procedure. The procurement documents consist of the contract notice, the invitation letter, the declaration on honour, the draft contract(s) and tender specifications with their respective annexes. All documents are available in the enclosed ZIP File.

Subject of the call

The subject of this call for tenders is to provide advisory services to the contracting authority within the framework of a European centre of expertise in the field of labour law, employment and labour market policies (ECE), as indicated in Heading II.1.1 of the contract notice.

Lot 1: Labour Law (European Labour Law Network)

This strand of the activities of the ECE shall rely on a network of highly qualified experts in labour law. For the purpose of this call, the Commission has defined a non-exhaustive list of key policy themes currently under focus, or likely to be under focus in the future:

• EU labour law and national labour law (including collective rights and individual rights);
• Employment protection legislation;
• Posting of workers;
• Undeclared work;
• New forms of employment;
• Digitalisation;
• Employment in forms of subcontracting, outsourcing or franchising;
• Employment-related data protection • Self-employment ;
• Work-life balance.

The purpose of the services in the area of labour law will be to:

• assist the Commission in its role of ensuring a correct application of EU labour law across all Member States and monitoring labour legislation reforms,;
• reinforce the Commission’s capacity to anticipate any problems that may possibly arise from the application of the EU directives, analysing their potential legal issues and the ECJ rulings;
• inform the Commission on legal developments taking place in Member States, EEA countries in areas covered or related to EU labour law, posting of workers, self employment and new forms of employment, and undeclared work;
• assist on occasional basis the Commission to better understand the legal context in candidate countries and potential candidates in relevant fields of labour law;
• improve awareness and encourage public debate on topical issues of interest for EU labour law and legislation.

In practice this shall include:

• on a monthly basis, providing relevant information to the Commission on the implementation and application of the EU Directives in the field of labour law, posting of workers, self-employment and new forms of employment, undeclared work as well as on relevant developments in national legislation and policies in these respective fields within the Member States and the EEA countries;
• giving independent advice, carry out legal analysis on the implementation and application of the EU Directives in the field of labour law, posting of workers, undeclared work following up on ad hoc requests concerning the Member States and the EEA countries; those requests shall also relate to labour law related issues in the candidate countries and potential candidate countries;
• providing the Commission with thematic research concerning labour law related thematic topics.

Lot 2: Employment and labour market policies (European Pool of Employment and Labour Market Experts)

The contractor shall manage and coordinate a pool of highly qualified experts in employment and labour market policies able to mobilise quickly high-level experts on specific thematic areas and/or country issues.

The activities of the ECE could take different forms, provided that it delivers on quickly mobilising specific expertise on labour market related issues. It could inter alia be a single entity or could be set up in the form of a consortium including Universities, research centres, think tanks in the area of labour market policies, etc. The methodology shall clearly specify how experts in specific areas will be mobilised on a short deadline. Letter of commitments of participating entities shall be requested.

For the purpose of this call for tender, the Commission has defined a non-exhaustive list of key policy themes under current focus, or likely to be under focus in the future. The areas of expertise are those covered in the 10 policy areas defined in the Joint Assessment Framework3 of employment policies agreed by the EPSCO Council in October 20104 , and furthermore reflect a number of additional policies:

• Increase labour market participation;
• Enhancing labour market functioning, combating segmentation;
• Stepping up social dialogue and the involvement of social partners in design and implementation of policies and reforms5 ;
• Stepping up civil society dialogue and the involvement of civil society partners in design and implementation of policies and reforms6 ;
• Occupational and geographical mobility (both within and between countries);
• Active labour market policies (ALMP) and Public Employment Services (PES);
• Adequate and employment oriented social security systems;
• Work-life-balance;
• Exploiting job creation possibilities;
• Gender equality;
• Improving skills supply and productivity, lifelong learning;
• Improving education and training systems;
• Wage setting mechanisms and labour cost developments;
• Minimum Wage;
• Unemployment (including long-term unemployment, Youth unemployment and NEET);
• Entrepreneurship, self-employment and new forms of employment;
• Future of Work and Job quality;
• Just transition to a climate-neutral and socially inclusive economy;
• Work-time arrangements, short-time working schemes;
• Labour taxation and tax wedge on low wage earners;
• Undeclared work;
• Active ageing and working life duration;
• Vacancies monitoring;
• Use of European Social/Structural Funds for employment.

The purpose of the services in the area of economic and policy aspects of labour markets will be to:

• provide specific analysis of the present and planned implementation of country specific recommendations by the Members States and National Employment Policy documents (in case of candidate countries and potential candidates).
• provide thorough analysis of practices implemented by employment services, social partners, civil society organisations and other practitioners on the ground and assess their efficiency and return on investment, so as to improve future policy proposals.
• report on and assess labour market dynamics, trends and policies in specific countries;
• provide the Commission with thematic researches concerning labour market related thematic topics.

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