Ilias has just returned from Thessaloniki, Greece, where he attend a Cedefop workshop on ‘Training Leave and Payback Clauses: Policies and Practices in Europe’. He presented on ‘Implementation and Training Leave in Greece’. The aim of the event was to discuss, validate and complement the results of Cedefop’s studies on training leave and payback clauses to promote VET in Europe. The workshop brought together representatives of governments, social partners, academia and research to encompass all points of view and perspectives in the debates.

Bernard Casey will giving a seminar at the Institute of Economics of Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest on 26 May on 'The implications of the economic crisis for pensions and pension policy in Europe'.

Population ageing and pressures on public finances have resulted in government pressing the extension of working lives. The economic crisis has meant that some people feel they cannot afford to retire but also that many employers are cutting back on their workforces. Bernard Casey will be giving a seminar on Wednesday 18 May 2011 as part of the University of Warwick Festival of Social Sciences in which he will provide insights into current research on issues relating to post-retirement-age working.

Bernard Casey is a Principal Research Fellow in IER who works on the economic implications of societal ageing. He has been a senior economist at the OECD and is currently a consultant to the European Commission with respect to its proposed Year of Active Ageing. With Professor Noel Whiteside from the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, he authored an article for Parliamentary Brief (May 2011) entitled “The pensions web which Mr Webb has to unweave”.

Bernard Casey addressed this issue in a response to the European Commission’s Green Paper Towards adequate, sustainable and safe European pension systems. Longer working could the growth in public expenditure on age pensions.  It could also reduce the need for those cuts in the value to pension benefits that have already been legislated for and that will otherwise take effect over the coming decades.

Bernard's repsonse can be accessed here: Ensuring adequacy and sustainability – the impact of raising the age of entitlement to an old-age pension.

Dr Ben Kriechel is researcher at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) in the Netherlands.  He has been project leader for several labour market research projects both nationally and internationally.  Dr Kriechel is visiting IER from 17-19 August working with Professor Rob Wilson on the Cedefop Forecasting Framework project.